A novel no-one wanted to publish

The Miles Franklin Award is Australia’s most prestigious, given annually to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases. The winner pockets A$60,000, while those on the shortlist take home $5,000 each. Since its inception in 1957, the Miles Franklin – like most major literary awards – has been distinguished by works that have the imprint of a traditional publisher. That changed in 2022.

Michael Winkler had some form coming into the Miles Franklin: he’d already been widely published in Australian newspapers and journals, and had won the 2016 Calibre Essay Prize for a nonfiction short story, The Great Red Whale. However, when it came to finding a home for his book, Grimmish – in his words ‘…a weird bricolage of wild fiction, memoir, found texts and questionable jokes…’ inspired by the 1908-09 visit to Australia of Joe Grim, an Italian-American boxer with a high tolerance threshold for absorbing physical punishment – none of the publishing houses were interested.

As rejection letters multiplied in his inbox, Winkler came to a decision: he would self-publish his novel. He’d been down this path before and knew it wouldn’t be easy. With a print run of 500, he set about campaigning to get the work noticed. In a leap of faith, four independent bookshops agreed to take copies, two of them in Victoria – his home state – and one each in Hobart and Brisbane. He posted copies to influential writers whom he thought might find the book interesting. Some of them praised it on social media. J.M. Coetzee wrote a generous letter to Winkler, referring to Grimmish as ‘…the strangest book you are likely to read this year.’ Helen Garner said that ‘…Grimmish meets a need I didn’t even know I had.’

Enthusiastic reviews followed and the book became one of the five best sellers at Winkler’s local bookshop, Brunswick Bound, and made the top ten at the other Victorian store. Then Grimmish made the long list of the Miles Franklin in late May. All literary hell broke loose.

People he both knew and didn’t know – well-known authors, academics, reviewers – started emailing their congratulations. Winkler’s Twitter feed ran hot with positive feedback. He was asked to do an interview and a reading, and pen something for a newspaper. A work that was years in the writing became an instant hit. As if that wasn’t enough, a month later the shortlist for the Miles Franklin was announced: Grimmish was on it.

Winkler didn’t win the Miles Franklin. But just as his print run sold out, Sydney publishers Puncher & Wattman offered to include Grimmish in their stable. Their edition is now on bookstore shelves, and several international publishers are understood to have expressed interest. None of this would have happened without Winkler having had the tenacity to bring to print and champion a story he believed in. The endorsement of his efforts is ‘…a thumbs up for every battling writer who has backed their efforts through self-publication.’