The Melbourne author Emily Bitto has won the 2015 Stella prize for women’s writing for her debut novel, The Strays, set in an 1930s Australian artists’ enclave.

Awarded the $50,000 prize cheque at a ceremony in Melbourne on Tuesday night, Bitto called it “an astounding, life-changing honour”. Her book, which went through 10 full redrafts, was published by the independent press Affirm.

Bitto said she was “particularly honoured to have won a prize that has grown from a motive so dear to my own heart: the desire to redress gender inequality in the literary world”.



Now in its third year, the Stella prize was established to recognise Australian women writers of fiction and non-fiction and is the second major literary award in Australia to be named after the author Stella Maria Sarah “Miles” Franklin. Eight of the 10 writers on the 2015 Miles Franklin longlist are women.

Awarded to Carrie Tiffany’s novel Mateship with Birds in 2013 and historian Clare Wright’s The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka in 2014, this is the first year the Stella prize has gone to a debut writer. Also on the Stella shortlist in 2015 were writers Joan London, Christine Kenneally, Sofie Laguna, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Ellen Van Neerven, who each receive cheques for $2,000.

Loosely based on the Heide school of painters, Bitto’s The Strays tells the story of childhood friends Lily and Eva, one born to ordinary struggling parents, the other to a modernist painter and his wealthy “old money” wife.

The unlikely bond between these central characters has resonated with readers, Bitto said. “It’s not really been written about that much: that intensity of friendship between girls in childhood. When you look at literature as a whole, those kind of relationships often get sidelined in favour of romance.”

Kerryn Goldsworthy, chair of a judging panel that also included journalist Caroline Baum, writer and lecturer Tony Birch, singer–songwriter Sarah Blasko and author Melissa Lucashenko, called Bitto’s book “both moving and sophisticated; well-researched and original; intellectually engaging and emotionally gripping”.

“The Strays is like a gemstone,” said Goldsworthy, “polished and multifaceted, reflecting illuminations back to the reader and holding rich colour in its depths.”

Bitto, who holds a masters in literary studies and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Melbourne, works full-time in Heartattack and Vine, the wine bar she opened in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton in late 2014.

“I’ve been working 80-hour weeks since we opened six months ago so I haven’t had any time to write,” she said. “Ideally, it’s all part of a longer-term plan to build a sustainable life around writing while still being able to pay the bills.”

The $50,000 Stella cheque will surely come in handy. “It will buy me time to work on my second novel,” said Bitto, who promises a more contemporary book while still drawing on her “interests and obsessions”.

Writing for Guardian Australia about the inspiration behind The Strays, Bitto said: “I wanted to write what I like to think of as an ‘outsider novel’ along the lines of other books I have loved, such as Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History.”



In its subject matter and sombre mood, the Stella judges compared her work to Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Sybille Bedford’s Jigsaw and AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book, company in which it “can hold its head high”, said Goldsworthy.

“It can be really quite a struggle to maintain your sense of confidence so it’s a huge boost to know that this particular group of five individuals who make up the judging panel enjoyed my book,” said Bitto. “After five months of being a bartender, Lily and Eva feel quite a long way away. It’s great to remember that I am writer.”

As for what cocktail she will be celebrating with at Heartattack and Vine, Bitto was unequivocal: “A dirty martini.”