Magabala is excited to announced that Homecoming by Elfie Shiosaki has been shortlisted for the 2022 Stella Prize.

Homecoming is a tender, yet fierce compilation of poetry, prose and archive that spans four generations of the women in Elfie’s family. It is a deeply respectful ode to the persistence of Noongar people in the face of colonisation and its afterlives.

The Stella judges report says:

Elfie Shiosaki writes with a steady – and often invisible – hand, amplifying the voices of people whose words have been buried for too long.

 

Shiosaki has produced a work of careful excavation. With an extraordinarily light touch on the page, Shiosaki moves beyond authorship, occupying, instead, the liminal space of daughter, caretaker, and choirmaster to a chorus of voices.

 

Shiosaki has delivered a work of poetic and narrative genius and can be read either as an ensemble of poems or as a single piece that moves seamlessly between the elegiac and the joyful. Homecoming is a gift to the nation, one that works its magic with a quiet grace and an unstinting clarity.

 The 2022 Stella Prize shortlist spans fiction, nonfiction, social history, a book-length essay, a graphic novel, and – eligible for the first time in 2022 – poetry.

The winner will be announced on the 27 April.