Miles Franklin Award winner
Jennifer Down has won the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, worth $60,000, for her second novel Bodies of Light (Text).
At 31 years old, Down is one of the youngest authors to win the award in its 65-year history, with the youngest being 23-year-old Randolph Stow for To the Islands in 1958.
Chosen from a shortlist of five announced in June, Bodies of Light follows protagonist Maggie, who fights to create a meaningful life for herself despite experiencing mental illness, substance abuse and emotional trauma—tragic by-products of an abusive childhood. The novel was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
Established through the will of Miles Franklin, the Miles Franklin Literary Award recognises a novel of the highest literary merit that presents ‘Australian life in any of its phases’.