The 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize Shortlist

Australian Book Review is delighted to announce the shortlisted authors of this year’s ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize: Kerry Greer, Shelley Stenhouse, and Jill Van Epps. The winner will be announced at Gleebooks on Thursday, 15 August, and will receive $6,000

The 2024 Jolley Prize was judged by Patrick Flanery (SA), Melinda Harvey (Vic) and Susan Midalia (WA). The judges’ report, as well as the full longlist, can be found below. 

Each of the shortlisted stories are published in the 2024 August issue (purchase single issues here). ABR extends a warm congratulations to Kerry Greer, Shelley Stenhouse, and Jill Van Epps, as well as to the longlisted entrants. Thank you to all who entered this year’s prize. We look forward to receiving your entries next year. 

Shortlisted

Kerry Greer
for ‘First Snow’

Kerry Greer is an Irish-Australian poet and writer. She received the Venie Holmgren Prize for Environmental Poetry in 2021. Kerry has been shortlisted for the Calibre Essay Prize, the Woollahra Digital Literary Award, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the ACU Poetry Prize, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, and more. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Cedar Crest College. Her début poetry collection, The Sea Chest, was published by Recent Work Press in 2023.

Shortlisted

Shelley Stenhouse
for ‘M.’

Shelley Stenhouse, a New York City-based poet and fiction writer, recently won the Palette Poetry Prize (judged by Edward Hirsch). Her collection, Impunity, was published by NYQ Books. She received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, an Allen Ginsberg Award, was a National Poetry Series finalist, and had two Pushcart Prize nominations (one by Tony Hoagland). Her work has appeared in New York Quarterly, Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Nimrod, Margie, Third Coast, Brooklyn Rail, Washington Square, and Poetry After 9/11: An anthology of New York poets (among others).

Shortlisted

Jill Van Epps
for ‘Pornwald’

Jill Van Epps is a writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in visual art from Goldsmiths College in London and studied video art in Berlin on a Fulbright fellowship. She was awarded the Margaret C. Annan Award for fiction and has had several poems published in journals, including The Pedestal Magazine, The Hiram Poetry Review, The Oyez Review, and Visions International. She is currently completing her first novel, Teenage Babylon.

Full longlist

Deborah Callaghan (NSW) | Small Details of Travel
Lily Chan (Vic) | great flying soar and in command
Rhonda Collis (Canada) | Sage
Luca Demetriadi (Vic) | Olga’s AirPod
Dan Disney (South Korea) | what a what is (an autofiction)
Laura Elvery (QLD) | Transatlantic
Kerry Greer (WA) | First Snow
John Kinsella (WA) | Accordion to Bach
John Kinsella (WA) | Falling Up Stairs
Sam Reese (UK) | Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise
Faith Shearin (USA) | Natural Disasters
Shelley Stenhouse (USA) | M.
Jill Van Epps (USA) | Pornwald

Judges’ comments

There were more than 1,300 entries to this year’s Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, which attracted writers from around the globe. The three judges were pleased to encounter a range of forms and genres, from literary realism to satire, speculative and historical fiction, dystopia, autofiction, and more experimental work. The stories explored themes of love, sex, and the pain of being alive, while many took an overtly political stance, addressing anxieties about climate change, social justice, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

The judges gravitated towards stories marked by an inventiveness of form and a distinctiveness of voice, stories that had something surprising to tell us and found imaginative ways of expressing ideas. The shortlisted stories negotiate the challenges of the form by skilfully combining brevity and depth, economy and resonance, offering refreshing perspectives on the world.

‘First Snow’ by Kerry Greer

‘First Snow’ subtly enacts a vulnerable young woman’s decision to leave her self-absorbed, manipulative partner, the father of her baby. Contrasting her banal relationship with a poetic response to the natural world and the enchantments of motherhood, the story reminds us that traditional domestic fiction, in the hands of an intelligent, empathic writer, can render the ‘ordinary’ both psychologically complex and deeply affecting.

‘M.’ by Shelley Stenhouse

In ‘M’, a middle-aged woman hooks up with a man whom she encounters through AA. Wittily told, this rollicking tale set in New York City is at once a character study of the garrulous oddball M and a tragicomic portrait of the narrator herself, whose compulsions and choices see her avoiding the everyday joys of her life as a mother.

‘Pornwald’ by Jill Van Epps

‘Pornwald’ is a puzzle that tests the limits of realism with an often riotously deadpan sense of humour. Characters move through a world that is superficially familiar, but as the story progresses, all may not be as it initially appears: this is an unpredictable place, wilder than the characters themselves realise. What would it mean, the story asks us to consider, if we were to wake up one day to our own unreality?

ABR warmly acknowledges the generous support of ABR Patron Ian Dickson, who makes the Jolley Prize possible in this lucrative form. We congratulate all the longlisted and shortlisted authors.

Previous winners

Subscribers to ABR can read previous prize-winning stories to the Jolley Prize. To read these stories, click here.

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