THE DIARY
Big week: Author Carrie Tiffany has been longlisted for the Miles Franklin.
It's been a good couple of weeks for Carrie Tiffany. Her second novel, Mateship with Birds, was on Tuesday longlisted for the $60,000 Miles Franklin, Australia's most significant literary prize.
Last week it was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the new literary award for women writers established in reaction to two all-male Miles shortlists within three years. It was also longlisted for Britain's Women's Fiction Prize, formerly known as the Orange.
But no one could accuse this year's Miles longlist of having a male bias. Of the 10 books listed, eight are by women. Five of the books are first novels: Floundering, Romy Ash; The Beloved, Annah Faulkner; The Mountain, Drusilla Modjeska; The Light Between Oceans, M. L. Stedman, and Red Dirt Talking, Jacqueline Wright. Tom Keneally, who has won the Miles twice before, is on the list for The Daughters of Mars, and the list is completed by Lola Bensky, Lily Brett; Questions of Travel, Michelle de Kretser; and Street to Street, Brian Castro.
Hot on the heels of Clover Moore: Christine Forster. Photo: Steven Siewert
This week, Tiffany has been working on a different sort of writing - how to control rampant blackberries - as part of her day job as an agricultural journalist. She has been previously shortlisted for the Miles for her first book Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, but she said that year the prize had been won by a better book that happened to be written by a man. ''It didn't seem to be a question of gender,'' she said. ''But when I look at reviews I am struck by the attention given to male writers.''
She said the problem for women writers was not simply a question of gender; it was more structural issues within society that meant women had not been in a situation for long when they could devote themselves to their writing. ''There are deeper questions than gender,'' she said. ''It is increasingly difficult for women to take themselves out of the wider culture to write; to say, I'm going to do something with my mind.''
Modjeska said she was ''absolutely thrilled'' to be longlisted, but ''there is a long gap between the longlist and shortlist.'' .
On most beautiful list: Actor James Franco. Photo: Getty Images
''I'm pleased because fiction is difficult and I'm still learning, but I feel the impulse is not that different from the personal and fictive impulses, and historical elements in my other writing,'' she said.
There were 73 novels entered for the prize. The shortlist will be announced on April 30 and the winner on June 19.
Jason Steger
. . . AND TRUMP THEIR RIVALS ELSEWHERE, TOO
The Archibalds are done and dusted, long live the Archies. Further evidence that book awards season, which unfurled with last week's announcement of the Stellad Prize shortlist, is under way: Monday night's charged glasses at the Indie Awards.
Three out of the four winners were female, the celebration of independent bookshops adding fuel to the fire of talent that is the female author, circa 2013. After quite a year for reclaiming the female in Australian public life - Prime Minister Julia Gillard's misogyny epic, the Destroy the Joint campaign and the decensoring of (and subsequent bombardment with) the word vagina - women have dominated the first smattering of shortlists, longlists and winners, not least the Miles Franklin, announced on Tuesday.
Berkelouw Bookstore in Paddington set the stage for the Indies. Toni Jordan, winner of the best fiction gong for Nine Days, flew up from Melbourne, celebrating her second success after her novel Addition won best newcomer in 2008.
This year's best debut fiction award - and overall book of the year - went to The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman.
Sri Lanka-born Michelle de Kretser, shortlisted for an award, made an appearance despite missing out in the final standings while captain of infamous flight QF32 and newly decorated author Richard de Crespigny admitted that he was bowled over by the success of QF32, which has sold 70,000 and has been reprinted six times. I'm a pilot, not an author, the clear polymath said in an artful deployment of a textbook humblebrag.
A WELCOME CHANGE OF GEAR
Face of Christian Dior and almost impossibly gamine Queensland girl Nicole Pollard is gearing up for Sydney Fashion Week - but not before breathing a sigh of relief to have the international autumn/winter shows behind her.
She's returned to Australia after seven weeks of travel, working haute couture shows and then ready-to-wear catwalks in New York, London, Milan and Paris.
By the end of the back-to-back shows, runways ''became a blur''. Her best memory of the trip, she says, is ''how happy I was when my last show was finally over'' - notwithstanding a trip to Shanghai for a Dior show this week, that is.
''Especially because I went from couture straight into ready to wear, you never get any time off, you leave early, get home at midnight, if you're lucky, then do it all over again.''
The engagements became especially tough after the model had a bout of food poisoning in Milan, thanks to supermarket-bought ham. Having worked through the illness - ''it wasn't the funnest but I needed to'' - she then caught the flu.
In Paris, she shared a hotel room with Murwillumbah beauty Olivia Thornton and spent time with Aussie models Jemma Baines and Kayla Hart - all the time missing the Australian summer weather. But Sydney's fashion showcase, launching from April 8, will be a far more ''relaxed and fun'' affair.
Ellery and Dion Lee are on her list of designer favourites at Mercedes-Benz Sydney Fashion Week, but with an insouciance only an 18-year-old can pull off, she admits she'll ''have to have a look at the schedule to see who else is showing, to be honest''.
If it all sounds about as glamorous as a pair of scuffed Crocs, bumping into Kate Moss at the Louis Vuitton show helped redress the balance - even if it was in the toilets.
YOUNG, FREE, UNISEX: PEJIC GETS INTIMATE WITH BOWIE
International supermodel Andrej Pejic has strutted glamorous runways in gorgeous dresses across the world. Aged 21, he has just appeared in David Bowie's new video where the two men - in a move reminiscent of that Mick Jagger Dancing in the Street moment - kiss.
Australian-raised Pejic has made his name modelling women's clothes, but has told the latest issue of The Australian Women's Weekly that he's ''young, free and unisex''.
Like so many rags-to-catwalk-riches stories, Pejic was spotted by a modelling scout. He was aged 15, it was New Year's Eve 2007 and he was at his first part-time job, at McDonald's.
After school, he was offered a place at Monash University but decided to defer it.
Today, he lives in New York City. He's in massive demand but his mother, who escaped the Balkans war with her two sons and lived in a refugee camp with them before coming to Australia, admits she worried about him as a child. ''I could see he was different,'' she says. He liked to wear girls' clothes, make-up and he blow dried his hair. He could have had a tough school life but Pejic went to University High in Melbourne, where there were no uniforms and no strict dress codes. ''I wasn't bullied but then maybe, because I looked so much like a girl, when I was walking to the railway station in [Broadmeadows, Melbourne] they just thought I was a girl,'' Pejic says.
ABBOTT'S SISTER KEEPS MOORE HONEST
The Liberal Party can now claim twice to forcing Sydney's lord mayor to cast off the trappings of state office following Monday night's City of Sydney council meeting. Less than a year after the dual role restrictions - dubbed the ''Get Clover'' legislation - required Clover Moore to give up her role as the Member for Sydney, a once familiar flourish crept back into Sydney's Town Hall. A lord mayoral minute on Monday night praising a policy that encouraged environmental building upgrades inadvertently did the same for the local politician's public office when it was signed off with ''MP''. The slip may have passed without comment, were it not for the keen eye of Liberal councillor Christine Forster. The sister of federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott called a point of order. ''Definitely put a line through the MP,'' said Moore, blaming recycling stationery for the slip.''Thank you for drawing that to our attention, Councillor Foster. It's an important issue.''
Leesha McKenny
KATZ SPELLBOUND
When dabbling in the dark arts, tread carefully. Theatre star Lally Katz was once told by a New York fortune teller that she had a curse and that she'd have everything she ever dreamt of so long as the spell was lifted. ''You know the good news is it's easy, we can do it tonight for $1100,'' Katz, whose stories of white witchcraft in Manhattan are the subject of her one-woman Belvoir Theatre production, was told. ''It's fair to say I spent a lot of money, but I think, I feel like the curse was at least removed for a while.'' Now the star of Stories I Want to Tell You in Person, is possibly having a rethink, having pulled out of all shows this week because of an ailment. The writer joked that her illness is a product of forces bigger than she is, attributing it to ''the gypsy curse''. Managers at Belvoir, however, delivered a far more parochial caveat: ''It's not too serious but unfortunately she is unable to perform.''
THE YEAR'S TOP GOOD LOOKERS
Elsewhere in fashion land, Who magazine launches its most beautiful people of 2013 list on Wednesday, a roll call of the usual suspects, we might add. Popettes Delta Goodrem and Adele sit alongside actors Jessica Chastain, Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Helen Mirren and Amanda Seyfried, with the obligatory cheeky royal - Prince Harry, of course - thrown in. For good measure, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi make the list, pushing Ellen fatigue into the red for those who may never have caught her daytime TV operatics.
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