Fed up with women being overlooked for literary prizes, sisters are doing it for themselves and establishing Australia’s answer to Britain’s Orange Prize for fiction, which is open to women only. Australia’s version will be known as the Stella and, at $50,000, will be slightly more lucrative than Britain’s £30,000 ($A46,400) prize – although sponsors are still being sought. The Stella will also differ from its British counterpart in that it will be open to all genres of writing by women, not just fiction. Ambassadors for the Stella prize include actor Claudia Karvan, author Helen Garner, feminist Eva Cox, and the Greens’ federal member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt.

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