Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia's most decorated authors, has won the 2025 Stella Prize, worth $60,000, for her novel Theory & Practice.

It's a case of third time lucky for the Sri Lankan-born author, who has been twice shortlisted for the Stella, a literary award for women and non-binary writers established in 2013. (That year, Questions of Travel was shortlisted and The Life to Come followed in 2018. Both novels went on to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award).

Stella CEO Fiona Sweet describes de Kretser's winning novel as "another example of the depth of her talent as a writer".
In their report, the 2025 Stella Prize judges described it as "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".

In 2025, the Stella Prize received more than 180 entries. It was the first year the Stella shortlist featured books exclusively by women of colour.

De Kretser says she's thrilled to have finally won the prize.

"It's wonderful to have this book recognised."

Read more through the link in our bio.

Photos by Teresa Tan for ABC Arts

As an Olympic gold medalist and Champions League winner, Almuth Schult was one of the top goalkeepers in women’s soccer, but she believes her career ended early because clubs were reluctant to sign a player with children.
The 34-year-old announced her retirement in March, three months after her contract ended with the Kansas City Current in the National Women’s Soccer League in the US. 
In an interview published by Germany’s Kicker magazine on Tuesday, she said she felt she could have played another “one, two years at the highest level” and that she believes being a mother was “the main reason” talks didn’t work out.
 
Schult gave birth to twins in 2020 and a third child in 2023.
 
“I was already out of contract after my second pregnancy,” said Schult, who played 66 times for the German national team. “No club believed I could still help, even though I had already proven it after my first pregnancy.”
 
Reporting by AP.
 
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Did you know that during the dark days of SEGREGATION in the United States, Black families were forced to pay TAXES that built schools their own children could not enter? While white children sat in shiny classrooms with new books and warm heaters, many Black kids sat in crumbling buildings, sometimes with no desks, no heat, and torn books passed down like leftover scraps.

This painful TRUTH is not just a forgotten piece of history — it’s proof of the strength and sacrifice that Black communities made just to claim a BASIC RIGHT: EDUCATION. Even when the SYSTEM locked them out, they built their own schools, taught their own kids at home, and stood up to unfair laws.

Stories like this remind us that every time you walk freely into a classroom today, or send your child to a good school, someone before you PAID THE PRICE for that freedom — sometimes twice. Once with their taxes, again with their struggle.

This is why we must never let these stories fade. HISTORY is more than dates and old photos — it’s the sacrifice, sweat, and HOPE that built the world we live in today.

This fact is backed by the US National Park Service and the Equal Justice Initiative, which documented how Black families often funded schools through taxes while being banned from attending them. (Source: Equal Justice Initiative, Segregation in America Report, 2018)

If this story touched you, please FOLLOW our BACKUP page (@afrikan_echo) because our main Instagram is facing RESTRICTIONS for sharing too much TRUTH. Also, SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel (african_echo) for more deep stories about AFRICAN HISTORY they don’t teach in school.

Do you want your BUSINESS or BRAND to reach an audience that cares about real stories? Reach out to us — let’s grow together.

Finally, SUPPORT our mission by getting our new book: “20 Notable Activists, Liberators, and Trailblazers Who Changed History [AFRICA WONDER WOMEN].” Your support helps us keep telling these stories that matter.

What do you think we can learn from these families who PAID FOR what they were denied? Type EQUALITY in the comments if you believe every child deserves FAIR EDUCATION!

On a pristine Australian island, the seabirds have become so full of plastic they crackle and crunch.

For about 18 years, Dr Jen Lavers has been travelling to Lord Howe Island to study the mutton birds, and every time finds more and more plastic inside them.

She says what is happening to the mutton birds is happening everywhere. Plastics and microplastics are being found in everything, including humans, but the migratory shearwater is a ‘sentinel species’ for a bigger problem.

“These birds have a very important story to tell, and what they are telling us is that their populations are in decline, that the amount of plastic they’re consuming is going up and up,” she said.

“The birds are telling us we need to do more.”

Dr Lavers has been seeking to raise the plight of the mutton bird, saying it is a canary in the coal mine for the world’s larger plastic problem.

And so, as Australian politicians campaigned in a federal election, she enlisted the help of long-time friend and Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, asking him to join her and see for himself the state of the mutton birds on Lord Howe Island.

Arriving to the island for the first time, Whish-Wilson said the mountainous landscape rising out of the fog was like something from Gilligan’s Island.

“It’s not really the kind of place you come to be shocked, and walk away feeling a little bit traumatised.”

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