The many roads to literary excellence

What does it take to become a major novelist? A university degree in creative writing? Years inside a literary workshop? Or simply the opportunity to write, read and develop a voice outside any formal system?

The history of Australia's Miles Franklin Award suggests that there is no single answer.

Look at the writers who have won Australia's most prominent literary prize in recent decades and their paths are strikingly varied. Some have passed through universities and creative-writing programmes. Others have come through journalism, law, acting, general literary study or less conventional forms of mentorship and professional life.

This does not mean that creative-writing programmes are unimportant. It means something more interesting: Australian literary recognition has not followed one institutional route.

Josephine Wilson offers one clear example of the academic path. Her novel Extinctions, which won the 2017 Miles Franklin Award, was written as part of her creative-writing PhD at the University of Western Australia. Anna Funder's All That I Am, which won the award in 2012, was her UTS Doctor of Creative Arts project. Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance, winner of the 2011 award, was also written as part of his doctorate at UWA.

These are not marginal examples. They show how universities can provide writers with time, intellectual environments and sustained engagement with the craft of fiction.

But the same prize also tells another story.

Shankari Chandran, who won in 2023 for Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, is a lawyer whose formal university education included law at UNSW. Sofie Laguna came to literature after working as an actor. Michelle de Kretser studied French literature. These writers do not fit neatly into the image of the novelist emerging from a conventional creative-writing programme.

The point is not that journalism, law, acting or literature degrees produce better writers than creative-writing programmes. There is no evidence for such a claim. The point is that major Australian fiction has repeatedly emerged from different forms of education and professional experience.

This distinction matters when we talk about universities. A university connection is not automatically a creative-writing pipeline. A writer may study a general subject, teach at a university, receive a fellowship or participate in a literary programme after already developing a career. Treating every university connection as evidence of creative-writing training would therefore distort the picture.

The Miles Franklin record is more interesting precisely because the routes are mixed.

There is a useful comparison here with New Zealand, although it should not be pushed too far. Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters has become an important centre for creative-writing education there. In 2021, the university reported that graduates of its MA in Creative Writing had won five of the eight categories at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

That is a striking example of one institution becoming an important route into national literary recognition. It represents one way in which a country's literary infrastructure can develop.

Australia shows us another set of routes. Its most important fiction prize has recognised writers who emerged through creative-writing research, general university education, professional careers and other forms of literary development. The difference is not necessarily one of quality. It is a difference in how writers can arrive at the centre of literary recognition.

That matters beyond literary biography.

Creative-writing education has expanded because it offers genuine advantages. A workshop can provide criticism that a beginning writer may struggle to find elsewhere. A university can give a writer time, teachers and a community of fellow writers. It can also provide networks that matter in a publishing industry where access and recognition are unevenly distributed.

But these advantages should not quietly become a definition of what a serious writer looks like.

A literary culture becomes narrower when aspiring writers begin to believe that there is only one respectable entrance into literature. Someone who has worked as a journalist, lawyer, teacher, actor or editor may possess experiences that eventually shape a distinctive literary voice. Someone without the money or opportunity to enter postgraduate education should not have to conclude that literary ambition is therefore closed to them.

The Miles Franklin Award cannot tell us that universities are unnecessary. Nor can its winners represent every Australian writer. A literary prize is a selective institution, and its choices are shaped by publishers, judges and the wider literary field.

But the record does establish something worth noticing.

Australian literary excellence has repeatedly arrived by different roads.

Some of those roads run through creative-writing programmes. Others begin elsewhere and eventually reach literature. That does not make one route superior to another. It suggests that literary cultures benefit when more than one route remains open.

Perhaps the important question is therefore not whether creative-writing programmes produce great writers. They clearly can.

It is whether a country needs them to produce great writers.

The history of the Miles Franklin Award suggests that Australia does not have to answer yes.