Latest news with #deKretser
The Advertiser
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Novel formula for interrupted tale claims Stella Prize
Michelle de Kretser is one of Australia's most celebrated writers - but the $60,000 Stella Prize has been a long time coming. The Sri Lankan-born Sydney author has been shortlisted three times, including for the very first Stella awarded in 2013, and has even judged the awards. Now her latest work of fiction, Theory & Practice, has finally won the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, announced Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival. "I thought this would be another shortlisting at best ... so it was just thrilling and incredible, and I've felt very lucky," she said ahead of the official announcement. "Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice," said chair of the judging panel Astrid Edwards. Theory & Practice begins with the tale of an Australian geologist in Switzerland, but is interrupted by what appears to be the author, aged in her twenties - declaring that she no longer wants to write novels that read like novels. The life and thoughts of this young woman take over, including her complicated relationship with literary hero Virginia Woolf - the "Woolfmother". There are sections on the pioneering English author, including investigating her anti-Semitism, and de Kretser declares these parts are as accurate as she could make them. But the characters and events of Theory & Practice are entirely fictitious. Adding to the trickery, one edition of the book has a snap of de Kretser as a student on the front cover, taken in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. "I wanted to write this novel that would make people think, 'Is this memoir? Is this all non-fiction?' But it's not, it's actually fiction that doesn't read like fiction," she said. Unlike her protagonist, de Kretser never studied Woolf at university, but reading about Woolf's late novel The Years, she found the English author had attempted to alternate story and essay. Woolf eventually ditched the idea, but for de Kretser it provided the scaffolding for an innovative structure. "The fiction, non-fiction thing didn't work for Virginia Woolf, I don't think it's going to work for me! So I will just try and do more of a mix," she said. Theory & Practice also investigates the pervasive tension between the work that artists leave behind, and their lives and political views. From Pablo Picasso to George Orwell, Paul Gauguin and Donald Friend, there's a long list of artists who would be cancelled - or jailed - if they were they alive today. So how to judge our literary heroes when we discover they have feet of clay? Openness is a start, according to de Kretser. "No one is perfect, but we acknowledge that people have done or said or written certain things that we find unacceptable, and that can be very hurtful," she said. At least the field of potential literary heroes has widened since Woolf's era - thanks in part to her own theory and practice, and thanks also to initiatives such as the Stella Prize. There were 180 entries for the 2025 Stella, and for the first time in the award's 13 years, the shortlist featured only women of colour. The Stella has made a difference to the book industry broadly, said de Kretser. "There has been much greater awareness of reviewing books by women, and greater awareness of gender issues on prize shortlists," she said. Michelle de Kretser is one of Australia's most celebrated writers - but the $60,000 Stella Prize has been a long time coming. The Sri Lankan-born Sydney author has been shortlisted three times, including for the very first Stella awarded in 2013, and has even judged the awards. Now her latest work of fiction, Theory & Practice, has finally won the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, announced Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival. "I thought this would be another shortlisting at best ... so it was just thrilling and incredible, and I've felt very lucky," she said ahead of the official announcement. "Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice," said chair of the judging panel Astrid Edwards. Theory & Practice begins with the tale of an Australian geologist in Switzerland, but is interrupted by what appears to be the author, aged in her twenties - declaring that she no longer wants to write novels that read like novels. The life and thoughts of this young woman take over, including her complicated relationship with literary hero Virginia Woolf - the "Woolfmother". There are sections on the pioneering English author, including investigating her anti-Semitism, and de Kretser declares these parts are as accurate as she could make them. But the characters and events of Theory & Practice are entirely fictitious. Adding to the trickery, one edition of the book has a snap of de Kretser as a student on the front cover, taken in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. "I wanted to write this novel that would make people think, 'Is this memoir? Is this all non-fiction?' But it's not, it's actually fiction that doesn't read like fiction," she said. Unlike her protagonist, de Kretser never studied Woolf at university, but reading about Woolf's late novel The Years, she found the English author had attempted to alternate story and essay. Woolf eventually ditched the idea, but for de Kretser it provided the scaffolding for an innovative structure. "The fiction, non-fiction thing didn't work for Virginia Woolf, I don't think it's going to work for me! So I will just try and do more of a mix," she said. Theory & Practice also investigates the pervasive tension between the work that artists leave behind, and their lives and political views. From Pablo Picasso to George Orwell, Paul Gauguin and Donald Friend, there's a long list of artists who would be cancelled - or jailed - if they were they alive today. So how to judge our literary heroes when we discover they have feet of clay? Openness is a start, according to de Kretser. "No one is perfect, but we acknowledge that people have done or said or written certain things that we find unacceptable, and that can be very hurtful," she said. At least the field of potential literary heroes has widened since Woolf's era - thanks in part to her own theory and practice, and thanks also to initiatives such as the Stella Prize. There were 180 entries for the 2025 Stella, and for the first time in the award's 13 years, the shortlist featured only women of colour. The Stella has made a difference to the book industry broadly, said de Kretser. "There has been much greater awareness of reviewing books by women, and greater awareness of gender issues on prize shortlists," she said. Michelle de Kretser is one of Australia's most celebrated writers - but the $60,000 Stella Prize has been a long time coming. The Sri Lankan-born Sydney author has been shortlisted three times, including for the very first Stella awarded in 2013, and has even judged the awards. Now her latest work of fiction, Theory & Practice, has finally won the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, announced Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival. "I thought this would be another shortlisting at best ... so it was just thrilling and incredible, and I've felt very lucky," she said ahead of the official announcement. "Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice," said chair of the judging panel Astrid Edwards. Theory & Practice begins with the tale of an Australian geologist in Switzerland, but is interrupted by what appears to be the author, aged in her twenties - declaring that she no longer wants to write novels that read like novels. The life and thoughts of this young woman take over, including her complicated relationship with literary hero Virginia Woolf - the "Woolfmother". There are sections on the pioneering English author, including investigating her anti-Semitism, and de Kretser declares these parts are as accurate as she could make them. But the characters and events of Theory & Practice are entirely fictitious. Adding to the trickery, one edition of the book has a snap of de Kretser as a student on the front cover, taken in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. "I wanted to write this novel that would make people think, 'Is this memoir? Is this all non-fiction?' But it's not, it's actually fiction that doesn't read like fiction," she said. Unlike her protagonist, de Kretser never studied Woolf at university, but reading about Woolf's late novel The Years, she found the English author had attempted to alternate story and essay. Woolf eventually ditched the idea, but for de Kretser it provided the scaffolding for an innovative structure. "The fiction, non-fiction thing didn't work for Virginia Woolf, I don't think it's going to work for me! So I will just try and do more of a mix," she said. Theory & Practice also investigates the pervasive tension between the work that artists leave behind, and their lives and political views. From Pablo Picasso to George Orwell, Paul Gauguin and Donald Friend, there's a long list of artists who would be cancelled - or jailed - if they were they alive today. So how to judge our literary heroes when we discover they have feet of clay? Openness is a start, according to de Kretser. "No one is perfect, but we acknowledge that people have done or said or written certain things that we find unacceptable, and that can be very hurtful," she said. At least the field of potential literary heroes has widened since Woolf's era - thanks in part to her own theory and practice, and thanks also to initiatives such as the Stella Prize. There were 180 entries for the 2025 Stella, and for the first time in the award's 13 years, the shortlist featured only women of colour. The Stella has made a difference to the book industry broadly, said de Kretser. "There has been much greater awareness of reviewing books by women, and greater awareness of gender issues on prize shortlists," she said. Michelle de Kretser is one of Australia's most celebrated writers - but the $60,000 Stella Prize has been a long time coming. The Sri Lankan-born Sydney author has been shortlisted three times, including for the very first Stella awarded in 2013, and has even judged the awards. Now her latest work of fiction, Theory & Practice, has finally won the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, announced Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival. "I thought this would be another shortlisting at best ... so it was just thrilling and incredible, and I've felt very lucky," she said ahead of the official announcement. "Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice," said chair of the judging panel Astrid Edwards. Theory & Practice begins with the tale of an Australian geologist in Switzerland, but is interrupted by what appears to be the author, aged in her twenties - declaring that she no longer wants to write novels that read like novels. The life and thoughts of this young woman take over, including her complicated relationship with literary hero Virginia Woolf - the "Woolfmother". There are sections on the pioneering English author, including investigating her anti-Semitism, and de Kretser declares these parts are as accurate as she could make them. But the characters and events of Theory & Practice are entirely fictitious. Adding to the trickery, one edition of the book has a snap of de Kretser as a student on the front cover, taken in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. "I wanted to write this novel that would make people think, 'Is this memoir? Is this all non-fiction?' But it's not, it's actually fiction that doesn't read like fiction," she said. Unlike her protagonist, de Kretser never studied Woolf at university, but reading about Woolf's late novel The Years, she found the English author had attempted to alternate story and essay. Woolf eventually ditched the idea, but for de Kretser it provided the scaffolding for an innovative structure. "The fiction, non-fiction thing didn't work for Virginia Woolf, I don't think it's going to work for me! So I will just try and do more of a mix," she said. Theory & Practice also investigates the pervasive tension between the work that artists leave behind, and their lives and political views. From Pablo Picasso to George Orwell, Paul Gauguin and Donald Friend, there's a long list of artists who would be cancelled - or jailed - if they were they alive today. So how to judge our literary heroes when we discover they have feet of clay? Openness is a start, according to de Kretser. "No one is perfect, but we acknowledge that people have done or said or written certain things that we find unacceptable, and that can be very hurtful," she said. At least the field of potential literary heroes has widened since Woolf's era - thanks in part to her own theory and practice, and thanks also to initiatives such as the Stella Prize. There were 180 entries for the 2025 Stella, and for the first time in the award's 13 years, the shortlist featured only women of colour. The Stella has made a difference to the book industry broadly, said de Kretser. "There has been much greater awareness of reviewing books by women, and greater awareness of gender issues on prize shortlists," she said.
West Australian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Novel formula for interrupted tale claims Stella Prize
Michelle de Kretser is one of Australia's most celebrated writers - but the $60,000 Stella Prize has been a long time coming. The Sri Lankan-born Sydney author has been shortlisted three times, including for the very first Stella awarded in 2013, and has even judged the awards. Now her latest work of fiction, Theory & Practice, has finally won the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, announced Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival. "I thought this would be another shortlisting at best ... so it was just thrilling and incredible, and I've felt very lucky," she said ahead of the official announcement. "Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice," said chair of the judging panel Astrid Edwards. Theory & Practice begins with the tale of an Australian geologist in Switzerland, but is interrupted by what appears to be the author, aged in her twenties - declaring that she no longer wants to write novels that read like novels. The life and thoughts of this young woman take over, including her complicated relationship with literary hero Virginia Woolf - the "Woolfmother". There are sections on the pioneering English author, including investigating her anti-Semitism, and de Kretser declares these parts are as accurate as she could make them. But the characters and events of Theory & Practice are entirely fictitious. Adding to the trickery, one edition of the book has a snap of de Kretser as a student on the front cover, taken in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. "I wanted to write this novel that would make people think, 'Is this memoir? Is this all non-fiction?' But it's not, it's actually fiction that doesn't read like fiction," she said. Unlike her protagonist, de Kretser never studied Woolf at university, but reading about Woolf's late novel The Years, she found the English author had attempted to alternate story and essay. Woolf eventually ditched the idea, but for de Kretser it provided the scaffolding for an innovative structure. "The fiction, non-fiction thing didn't work for Virginia Woolf, I don't think it's going to work for me! So I will just try and do more of a mix," she said. Theory & Practice also investigates the pervasive tension between the work that artists leave behind, and their lives and political views. From Pablo Picasso to George Orwell, Paul Gauguin and Donald Friend, there's a long list of artists who would be cancelled - or jailed - if they were they alive today. So how to judge our literary heroes when we discover they have feet of clay? Openness is a start, according to de Kretser. "No one is perfect, but we acknowledge that people have done or said or written certain things that we find unacceptable, and that can be very hurtful," she said. At least the field of potential literary heroes has widened since Woolf's era - thanks in part to her own theory and practice, and thanks also to initiatives such as the Stella Prize. There were 180 entries for the 2025 Stella, and for the first time in the award's 13 years, the shortlist featured only women of colour. The Stella has made a difference to the book industry broadly, said de Kretser. "There has been much greater awareness of reviewing books by women, and greater awareness of gender issues on prize shortlists," she said.
Perth Now
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Novel formula for interrupted tale claims Stella Prize
Michelle de Kretser is one of Australia's most celebrated writers - but the $60,000 Stella Prize has been a long time coming. The Sri Lankan-born Sydney author has been shortlisted three times, including for the very first Stella awarded in 2013, and has even judged the awards. Now her latest work of fiction, Theory & Practice, has finally won the $60,000 prize for Australian women and non-binary writers, announced Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival. "I thought this would be another shortlisting at best ... so it was just thrilling and incredible, and I've felt very lucky," she said ahead of the official announcement. "Theory & Practice is an exceptional novel of hyper realism in which Michelle de Kretser, an author at the height of her powers, interrogates the messiness of life found in the gap between theory and practice," said chair of the judging panel Astrid Edwards. Theory & Practice begins with the tale of an Australian geologist in Switzerland, but is interrupted by what appears to be the author, aged in her twenties - declaring that she no longer wants to write novels that read like novels. The life and thoughts of this young woman take over, including her complicated relationship with literary hero Virginia Woolf - the "Woolfmother". There are sections on the pioneering English author, including investigating her anti-Semitism, and de Kretser declares these parts are as accurate as she could make them. But the characters and events of Theory & Practice are entirely fictitious. Adding to the trickery, one edition of the book has a snap of de Kretser as a student on the front cover, taken in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. "I wanted to write this novel that would make people think, 'Is this memoir? Is this all non-fiction?' But it's not, it's actually fiction that doesn't read like fiction," she said. Unlike her protagonist, de Kretser never studied Woolf at university, but reading about Woolf's late novel The Years, she found the English author had attempted to alternate story and essay. Woolf eventually ditched the idea, but for de Kretser it provided the scaffolding for an innovative structure. "The fiction, non-fiction thing didn't work for Virginia Woolf, I don't think it's going to work for me! So I will just try and do more of a mix," she said. Theory & Practice also investigates the pervasive tension between the work that artists leave behind, and their lives and political views. From Pablo Picasso to George Orwell, Paul Gauguin and Donald Friend, there's a long list of artists who would be cancelled - or jailed - if they were they alive today. So how to judge our literary heroes when we discover they have feet of clay? Openness is a start, according to de Kretser. "No one is perfect, but we acknowledge that people have done or said or written certain things that we find unacceptable, and that can be very hurtful," she said. At least the field of potential literary heroes has widened since Woolf's era - thanks in part to her own theory and practice, and thanks also to initiatives such as the Stella Prize. There were 180 entries for the 2025 Stella, and for the first time in the award's 13 years, the shortlist featured only women of colour. The Stella has made a difference to the book industry broadly, said de Kretser. "There has been much greater awareness of reviewing books by women, and greater awareness of gender issues on prize shortlists," she said.
New York Times
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Story of Love, Critical Theory and Other Wild Fictions
In the 1980s, an intellectual revolution took hold on college campuses, spreading, this newspaper reported at the time, 'like kudzu.' Under the deceptively unassuming shorthand of 'theory,' a heady brew of philosophical schools and ideas — many of them imported from France — upended longstanding assumptions about language, meaning, reality and the human self. According to theory, words referred not to the world they were tasked with representing but only to other words in a ruthless system where meaning was elusive, reality an illusion and the self a romantic fiction perpetrated by the capitalist bourgeoisie. This revolution is in full swing when the 24-year-old narrator of Michelle de Kretser's deftly crafted new novel, 'Theory & Practice,' leaves her job in market research and moves from Sydney to Melbourne in 1986 to attend a graduate program in English literature. She buys a vintage dress in 'Intellectual Black,' finds a feminist scholar to supervise her thesis on Virginia Woolf and falls in with a loose circle of ironic creatives: a sax player in a feminist band, a sculptor who 'looked like Patti Smith but with much stormier hair' and a Marxist lecturer in art history who throws a party for his brand-new Apple Macintosh — 'a boxy object in orthopedic non-color' that presides over his desk surrounded by awed guests. Soon the narrator embarks on a consuming affair with Kit, an engineering student who's in a 'deconstructed relationship' with someone else. Yet she's unprepared for how her field has changed since she was last in school: 'Theory had taken book, essay, novel, story, poem and play, and replaced them all with text,' she marvels. 'It was necessary to make the text confess. Applying pressure to soft, secret places, the critic exposed fake oppositions, crude essentialisms, bourgeois hegemonies, totalizing mechanisms, humanist teleologies, squalid repressions, influential aporias, and many more textual fragilities. The text bucked and shrieked under the critic's ministrations, but the critic was merciless.' The excesses of 1980s academia are ripe fodder for de Kretser's mordant wit, but her aim here is more ambitious — and the results more rewarding. An Australian novelist of the first rank, who, like the narrator of 'Theory & Practice,' emigrated from Sri Lanka as a child, de Kretser has long been fascinated by the gap between our ideals and our actions — between theory and practice — including with respect to the novel itself. Her last book, 'Scary Monsters,' featured two obliquely linked narratives printed back to back and upside down; 'Theory & Practice' is also a bold experiment in form. It begins in the mode of realist fiction — a young Australian man touring the Swiss Alps recalls a recent love affair and a childhood transgression — before the narrator abruptly switches gears, a dozen pages in, to a first-person account that has the ring of memoir. 'I was discovering that I no longer wanted to write novels that read like novels,' the narrator interjects, explaining why she's abandoned her opening gambit. 'Instead of shapeliness and disguise, I wanted a form that allowed for formlessness and mess.' The ensuing book, a taut, enthralling hybrid of fact and fiction impossible to disentangle, situates itself firmly in the mess — in a host of contradictions and uncertainties. The narrator considers jealousy beneath her ('a morbid symptom that ran counter to feminist practice'), but she is overcome with fantasies of breaking into Kit's girlfriend's home and ransacking it. The young Marxists she knows confidently refer to the times as 'Late Capitalism,' but, she wonders, how can they be sure 'we weren't stuck in About a Third of the Way Through Capitalism? Or Still Just Revving Up Capitalism?' The English department's tenured position goes to a male Marxist who has published only journal articles rather than the narrator's female adviser, who's about to release a second book. More confusing is Woolf. She is the novelist the narrator cares for most, one the French feminists she reads revere as an embodiment of the 'disruptive Maternal' — an authentically female style. Yet Woolf's diaries betray her racism, including a description of an esteemed Sri Lankan barrister as a 'caged monkey' and 'mahogany colored wretch.' The narrator's thesis, restricted to Woolf's fiction and jammed into 'the corset of theory,' leaves her with lingering shame. Woolf, she tells us, planned late in her career to write a new kind of novel that would alternate fiction with essays. But the form proved impossible to crack and the book Woolf wrote instead, her best seller 'The Years,' remained a work of realist fiction. The trouble with realism, de Kretser suggests, is that its satisfactions — 'the possibility of redemption, answers and patterns, motives and cause' — are hardly realistic. In 'Theory & Practice' she offers an alternative whose pleasures are no less great for incorporating more mess.
Washington Post
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Theory & Practice' is a whip-smart novel about life and art
Michelle de Kretser first stunned me in 2020 with her small, perfect tribute 'On Shirley Hazzard,' a brief work of outsized wisdom. But de Kretser had by then already earned fine notoriety with her fiction — praised by such luminaries as Hilary Mantel, Anita Desai, Ursula Le Guin, and A. S. Byatt.
