Stella Prize longlist of top Australian women writers announced

Ward's book, In My Mother's Hands, is a harrowing account of her childhood, growing up with a mother suffering from mental illness and a womanising father who was an active member of the Communist party.

The longlist for this year's $50,000 Stella Prize reflects what judges call a recurrent theme in writing by Australian women, "the exercise of power". There are 12 writers listed for the prize, which was first mooted four years ago in response to a perceived bias against women in the awarding of Australia's literary prizes.

The judges said the books – novels, short stories, non-fiction, memoir, science writing, young-adult fiction – examined "the power of one race or class over another, of humans over animals and, most of all, the power of adults over children. The vulnerability of children and the harm that can befall them is a particularly strong theme running through the list, and there's a kind of symmetry in the fact that this year the longlist for a women's prize should feature several books about boys and boyhood".

The other longlisted books are: Foreign Soil, Maxine Beneba Clarke; The Strays, Emily Bitto; Only the Animals, Ceridwen Dovey; This House of Grief, Helen Garner; Golden Boys, Sonya Hartnett; The Invisible History of the Human Race, Christine Kenneally; The Eye of the Sheep, Sofie Laguna; The Golden Age, Joan London; Laurinda, Alice Pung; Nest, Inga Simpson; Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven.

Carrie Tiffany won the inaugural Stella Prize in 2013 for her novel Mateship with Birds. The shortlist will be announced on March 12 and the winner on April 21.