Melbourne author Jennifer Down has won the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award, one of Australia's most prestigious prizes for writers, for her ambitious and brutally realist novel Bodies of Light, which examines the impacts of childhood trauma on a person's life.
Down is the 18th woman to win the Miles Franklin — named for one of Australia's most celebrated, albeit controversial, women authors — since its inception in 1957. Nine novels by women have won in the past decade.
Bodies of Light is the 31-year-old author's second novel, and her third book — after her 2016 debut, Our Magic Hour, and her award-winning 2017 short story collection, Pulse Points.
lt chronicles the life of Maggie: from growing up as a victim of abuse in out-of-home care in suburban Melbourne in the 70s; through her adult struggles with mental illness, grief and addiction in Australia, New Zealand and the United States; to her relatively quiet middle age, working as a nurse in Burlington, Vermont.
The judges — chaired by NSW Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville — praised Down's "extraordinary skill and compassion" in crafting her novel, adding: "Down has written an important book, which speaks to an urgent issue in contemporary Australian life."
Down first became familiar with the subject of out-of-home care as the daughter of two parents working in the welfare system, who would talk about their work and about social policy at the dinner table.
"My earliest memories are of my mum and grandpa shit-canning [former Victorian premier] Jeff Kennett in the early 90s because he decimated welfare systems," Down says.
For Bodies of Light, she undertook deep, detailed research into residential and out-of-home care systems in the 70s and 80s.
Accepting the Miles Franklin Award on Wednesday, Down said: "I'm deeply touched that this was deemed a story that was worthy of an award.
Down tells ABC Arts that she was surprised to win, due to the strength of this year's shortlist – which includes two-time winner Michelle de Kretser and the twice-shortlisted author Michael Mohammed Ahmad.
"It feels really special to be a part of this particular list of people doing things that are really exciting," says Down.
This year's shortlist is the first to feature more writers of colour than writers from Anglo-Saxon backgrounds. It also includes more women than men.
"It definitely is a shortlist that suggests to me that things are shifting a little bit in what we've traditionally considered to be the canon of Australian literature," she says.
A gratifying response
Bodies of Light opens with Maggie — now going by the name Holly — being contacted on Facebook by someone from her past who recognises her in a viral photo:
"I became a new person a long time ago, and by the time I got that message, I didn't think anyone was looking for who I used to be."
From that moment, Maggie begins to document her fractured past, piecing together memories of a childhood in which she is passed between foster homes and institutions, where she suffers abuse from the people charged with caring for her.
Down tells ABC Arts that the most gratifying responses she received from readers were when care leavers from the 70s and 80s would reach out to her to say that she had crafted something truthful to their experiences.
"Often people will say things like, 'You made me feel visible' or 'You made me feel seen'," says Down.
"What a privilege for me to receive an email like that and to feel trusted with somebody telling me their story."
As readers, we follow Maggie as she builds new selves throughout her life — with a large section dedicated to her as a newlywed living on Phillip Island in southern Victoria, where she suffers the loss of three infant children.
Down's careful rendition of Maggie's experiences was the product of years of research into out-of-home care, perinatal mental health and parental infanticide, with Down poring over academic articles, Supreme Court judgements, care leaver testimonies, police interview transcripts and government reports.
Even as she incorporated authentic images and emotions from this research — including the wind chimes that warn a child in care of the approach of a predatory staff member — Down was wary of the novel veering into voyeurism.
She says she asked herself: "How do we bear witness to somebody's suffering in a way that's not voyeuristic and that gives them agency and ownership over their story?
To achieve that, she drew upon fiction and non-fiction that used first-person testimony, including the work of Nobel Prize-winning Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich and French writer Annie Ernaux.
"Both Alexievich and Ernaux offer up these examples of suffering [in a way that's] almost objective, I think, the narrativisation of these traumas, and it really encourages you, as the reader, to bring your own experiences and memories and emotion to the table," Down says.
'Australian life in any of its phases'
As set out in the author's will, the Miles Franklin Literary Award aims to reward a novel "of the highest literary merit" that "present[s] Australian life in any of its phases".
Down stresses that, while Bodies of Light presents a depiction of residential or foster care in the 70s and 80s, systemic issues are ongoing.
"We would be foolish to think that growing up in resi or foster care today is really very different to what it was back then, in terms of the various ways that the system fails children and young people," she says.
However, Down hopes the book's recognition draws attention to the problem.
"I think, for too long, we just haven't been bothered or we haven't wanted to look at it, because it was too tricky or too painful."
Down also hopes that care leavers will be given the opportunity to tell their own stories.
"There's room for many more permutations and versions of his story," she says.
A reprieve
Down, who works as a copywriter, missed a call from Miles Franklin judge Richard Neville while she was at work, and initially thought it was her dentist.
When she rang him back and he gave her the news about her win, she sank to her knees "like a woman in an old-timey movie".
"I didn't know that that was a physiological response that I would actually have," she says.
Down says she will put much of the $60,000 prize money straight into superannuation — and set some aside to buy a fancy vacuum cleaner.
While she has always worked a day job around her writing, those gigs have never been especially lucrative.
"I spent all of my 20s pretty much in financial precarity. It's such a profound relief, more than anything else, to know that at this point in my life … [I have] a bit more stability and security," she says.
Her longer-term goal is to be able to afford to take six months off work to walk the Appalachian Trail in the US, from Georgia to Maine.
"I've never been able to even entertain the idea seriously before [until now]," she says.
Currently she's working on a novel that plays with ideas around sketch comedy and non-linear narrative structure — and her research involves watching classic skits on YouTube.
It's a reprieve from the weight of the subject matter of Bodies of Light.
"It's been fun to puddle around in something that is not as endlessly soul-crushing as a lot of the research I had to do for Bodies of Light. Maybe the sketch comedy thing is an unconscious swing towards something a bit lighter."
