Michelle de Kretser wins the 2025 Stella Prize for 'Theory & Practice'

WORDS Kirsty Thatcher PHOTOGRAPHY courtesy of the Stella Prize PUBLISHED Fri, 23 May 2025 - 6:02 pm

Michelle de Kretser has won the 2025 Stella Prize for her seventh novel, Theory & Practice.

The news was announced this evening at a special event during the Sydney Writers' Festival, held at Carriageworks. The ceremony marked a historic moment, as the first time in Stella Prize history that members of the public were invited to join the judges in honouring the incredible talent of this year’s longlisted, shortlisted, and winning authors.

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka, and now resides in Sydney, where she is an honorary associate of the English department at the University of Sydney. Her winning work is also shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the BookPeople BookData Adult Fiction Book Of The Year.

Fiona Sweet, the Stella CEO, shared her congratulations for de Kretser, saying, “In this, the thirteenth year, I am honoured to be working with the judges, the team and board to celebrate the 2025 Stella Prize winner. I have long been a fan of Michelle’s work and am constantly surprised and delighted while reading her books. Theory & Practice is another example of the depth of her talent as a writer."

Judges Astrid Edwards, Leah Jing Mcintosh and Rick Morton expressed a similar sentiment for de Kretser's work in their report, writing, “Theory & Practice opens on the image of an Australian geologist hiking in the Swiss Alps, yet soon takes a swerve, interrupted by the writer herself, or a version of the writer herself, as she realises that she no longer wants to ‘write novels that read like novels. Instead of shapeliness and disguise, I wanted a form that allowed for formlessness and mess. It occurred to me that one way to find that form might be to tell the truth’. Theory & Practice is such an attempt, and true to form (or perhaps formlessness), de Kretser’s ‘mess’ is no ordinary mess but rather instead a brilliantly auto fictive knot, composed of the shifting intensities and treacheries of young love, of complex inheritances both literary and maternal, of overwhelming jealousies and dark shivers of shame."

The 2025 Stella shortlist was a landmark in Australian literary history, featuring only women of colour for the first time. The six shortlisted works – three non-fiction and three fiction – showcased an extraordinary range of voices and perspectives, underscoring the continuing importance of the Stella Prize in amplifying diverse literary voices. You can get acquainted with the 2025 shortlist here.

What does the Stella Prize winner receive?

Michelle de Kretser has been awarded $60,000 for her work. This year, there were 180 entrants.

How does the Stella Prize work?

The Stella Prize honours the work of Australian women and non-binary writers across all genres. To be eligible, books must be published within the previous calendar year – so for the 2025 prize, that includes titles released between 1 January and 31 December 2024. It’s a celebration of literary excellence in all its forms.