2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner

Congratulations to Jennifer Down (Class of 2008) who has won the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award with her most recent novel, Bodies of Light. This epic novel is a masterwork of tragedy and heartbreak — the story of a life in full.

Jennifer Down has become one of the writers defining her generation after being shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2022 with her novel Bodies of Light. As a prolific writer and editor, her work has appeared in The Age, Saturday Paper, Australian Book Review and Literary Hub. She was named a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year consecutively in 2017 and 2018.

Her unpublished manuscript, Our Magic Hour was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Her novel Pulse Points, was the winner of the 2018 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the 2018 Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection in the Queensland Literary Awards, and was shortlisted for a 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award was established in 1954 and is Australia’s most prestigious literature prize. Established through the will of My Brilliant Career author, Miles Franklin, the prize is awarded each year to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases. A warm congratulations to Jennifer.

Please view the announcement here. Photo credit: The Guardian.