Anna McGahan’s Immaculate is the 2023 winner of The Australian / Vogel’s Award for Young Writers. Her uncle, Australian novelist Andrew McGahan has also been a recipient of the award. The award is one of Australia’s richest and most prestigious awards for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of 35.
ABOUT THE BOOK
All Frances wants is a cure for her daughter, but that would take a miracle, and miracles aren’t something Frances believes in anymore
All Frances wants is a cure for her daughter, but that would take a miracle, and miracles aren’t something Frances believes in anymoreNewly divorced from her pastor ex-husband and excommunicated from the church community she once worked within, she wrestles alone with the prognosis of her terminally ill child. Any suggestion of ‘divine intervention’ is salt in the wound of her grief. So when Frances is forced to take in a homeless and pregnant teenage girl who claims to have had an immaculate conception, she’s deeply challenged.
But 16-year-old Mary is not who she seems, and soon opens the door to perspectives that profoundly shift Frances’s sense of reality, triggering a chain of astonishing events. It seems that where there is the greatest suffering lies an unexpected magic. Frances begins to hold hope for her family’s future, but the miracle prayed for is not always the one received.
Immaculate is a provocative and tender exploration of loss, identity and healing, and the secret worlds we hide within in order to survive.
ABOUT ANNA MCGAHAN
Anna McGahan is a writer and actor. She is the author of the memoir Metanoia and a collection of poetry, Skin. She has written plays, screenplays, and essays for The Griffith Review, The Guardian and other publications. Anna is best known for her work as a television and theatre actor (In Our Blood, Underbelly Razor, House Husbands, Anzac Girls, Dr Blake etc), and was the recipient of the Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2012. She lives in Meanjin (Brisbane) with her two daughters.
