Showing all posts tagged: Charlotte Wood
Charlotte Wood did not win the Booker Prize, still gets Booker bump
22 November 2024
Sales of Australian author Charlotte Wood’s latest novel Stone Yard Devotional have enjoyed a boost, as a result of being both long and short listed for this year’s Booker Prize. The phenomena is sometimes called the Booker bump:
Her publisher says that since winning the Stella Prize in 2016 for The Natural Way of Things, her blistering feminist critique of the patriarchy, “Charlotte’s books have been bestsellers — and Stone Yard Devotional is no exception. Since being longlisted for the Booker Prize, sales have increased by over 30 per cent. We have to date sold over 40,000 copies of this beautiful book.”
Anyone who makes it to even the longlist of any literary award, but goes no further, is a winner if you ask me.
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Australian literature, Booker Prize, Charlotte Wood, literary awards
Orbital by Samantha Harvey wins 2024 Booker Prize
14 November 2024
British author Samantha Harvey has been named winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, with her novel, Orbital, published by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Penguin Books. I don’t know how many novels are set on the International Space Station, I’m sure there’s a few, but Orbital is one of them:
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.
I’d been gunning for Stone Yard Devotional, which I read earlier this year, by Australian author Charlotte Wood, who was on the Booker shortlist with Harvey. But I’ll be adding Orbital to my TBR list.
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Booker Prize, Charlotte Wood, literary awards, Samantha Harvey
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood on 2024 Booker Prize shortlist
18 September 2024
Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood has gone through to the shortlist of the 2024 Booker Prize, with her novel Stone Yard Devotional, which was announced on Monday 16 September 2024. If Wood were to win the Booker Prize this year, she would become the first Australian author to do so since Richard Flanagan in 2014, with his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
The 2024 winner will be named on Tuesday 12 November 2024.
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Australian literature, Booker Prize, Charlotte Wood, literary awards, Richard Flanagan
Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2024 shortlist
20 August 2024
Do Australian Prime Ministers have time to read books? They may not, but they do have a literary award for Australian publications, created in 2008, of which the 2024 shortlist was announced last week. Five titles, across the six award categories of fiction, non-fiction, Australian history, poetry, children’s, and young adult, were included.
Among books shortlisted are Eventually Everything Connects, by Sarah Firth, in the non-fiction category, and the previously mentioned Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood, in fiction. Welcome to Sex, by Yumi Stynes and Melissa Kang, was included in young adult. The title stirred up controversy last year, after some people objected to certain of the content, claiming some of subject matter was not appropriate for a sex education book.
The backlash was ferocious in some quarters, with staff at some shops selling the title being abused — unacceptable — by would-be customers, while at least one person was convicted of making threats via social media — likewise unacceptable — against co-author Stynes.
The winners of this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards will be unveiled on Thursday 12 September 2024.
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Australian literature, Charlotte Wood, literary awards, Sarah Firth, Yumi Stynes
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood included on Booker Prize longlist
6 August 2024
Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood has been included on the 2024 longlist for the Booker Prize, with her latest novel, Stone Yard Devotional. It is the first time a work by an Australian writer has featured on the Booker longlist since 2016.
I’m reading Stone Yard Devotional right now, and loving it. Some reviewers however have complained it plods, and is too introspective. The story is about a woman, non-religious, who retreats to a convent in outback Australia for a while to sort out her life. Her musing however, are interrupted by a number of unexpected happenings.
Wood’s 2019 novel The Weekend is another great read, in case you’re on the lookout for book recommendations. It was adapted for the stage, and has been optioned for a screen production.
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Australian literature, Booker Prize, Charlotte Wood, literary awards
The 2024 Miles Franklin longlist for Australian novel writing
16 May 2024
Well this is exciting, the longlist for the 2024 Miles Franklin literary award for Australian novel writing, has been published. Not sure how I missed the official announcement, but I went searching for a date the longlist would be unveiled, and instead found the longlist itself:
- Only Sound Remains, by Hossein Asgari
- Wall, by Jen Craig
- Strangers at the Port, by Lauren Aimee Curtis
- Anam, by André Dao
- The Bell of the World, by Gregory Day
- Edenglassie, by Melissa Lucashenko
- The Sitter, by Angela O’Keefe
- Hospital, by Sanya Rushdi
- Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood
- Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright
Praiseworthy, which won the 2024 Stella Prize, and Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, are notable inclusions. I loved Wood’s 2019 novel, The Weekend, and I guess a few other people also, as the film option was sold a couple of years ago, and a stage adaptation was also made.
I can’t — as yet — find a date the shortlist will be announced. Come to that, I couldn’t even find a date the longlist would be published, I just seemed to stumble upon it last night. I can’t figure out why they need to be so elusive about these things. The Miles Franklin is after all one of the highlights of the Australian literary calendar.
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Alexis Wright, Australian literature, Charlotte Wood, literary awards, Miles Franklin
The Weekend by Charlotte Wood adapted for stage at Belvoir St Theatre
14 August 2023
A stage adaptation of Australian author Charlotte Wood’s 2019 novel, The Weekend, opened in Sydney on Saturday 5 August 2023. I read a few months ago that a production company had bought the film rights, but I didn’t know about the stage adaptation.
Much of the dark humour permeating the novel was voiced through the internal monologue of the characters, something I hope is carried over somehow in the dramatic adaptations.
If you’re in Sydney, the show is on until Sunday 10 September 2023, at the Belvoir St Theatre.
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Australian literature, Charlotte Wood, entertainment
Brouhaha buys film rights for The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
22 June 2022
Here’s the book to screen adaptation we’ve been waiting for. The film rights for Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood’s highly acclaimed 2019 novel The Weekend, have been bought by Brouhaha Entertainment, a production company with offices in London and Sydney.
The 2019 book, published by Allen & Unwin, follows three friends for one last, life-changing long weekend, during a subtropical Sydney Christmas. As they declutter the beach home belonging to the fourth member of their quartet, who died the previous year, there is an escalating sense of tension as frustrations and secrets bubble to the surface.
And to the obvious question, who are they going to cast?
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Australian literature, Charlotte Wood, film, screen adaptations
The Secret Life of Writers podcast with Charlotte Wood
21 October 2021
Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood speaks to Jemma Birrell, creative director at Tablo Publishing, and host of the Secret Life of Writers podcast. Wood, who is based in Sydney’s bustling inner west, speaks of the quiet she finds on the NSW Central Coast, something conducive to her writing. That I can go for. Fascinating to hear Wood describe her writing journey. She started out wanting to write, but not knowing what to write.
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The Luminous Solution, by Charlotte Wood
8 October 2021
The Luminous Solution (published by Allen & Unwin, September 2021) is new work – non-fiction this time – from Sydney based Australian Stella Prize winning author Charlotte Wood, she of The Weekend fame.
A rich inner life is not just the preserve of the arts. The joys, fears and profound self-discoveries of creativity – through making or building anything that wasn’t there before, any imaginative exploration or attempt to invent – I believe to be the birthright of every person on this earth. If you live your life with curiosity and intention – or would like to – this book is for you.
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Australian literature, Charlotte Wood, writing