Shankari Chandran calls her award a collective win for the POC community in Australia. Photo: Supplied.
Shankari Chandran has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens,published by Ultimo Press.
An equally shocked and ecstatic Chandran speaks to ArtsHub about her win from her Sydney home. ‘I was told a few weeks ago and I made poor Richard Neville, the chair of the selection panel, repeat himself to me four times because my brain just did not compute what he was saying. And then I asked him if I could just put him on mute so that I could scream.’
Thuy On is the Reviews and Literary Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the Books Editor of The Big Issue for 8 years and a former Melbourne theatre critic correspondent for The Australian.
She has three collections of poetry published by the University of Western Australian Press (UWAP): Turbulence (2020), Decadence (2022) and Essence (2025).
Threads: @thuy_on123 Instagram: poemsbythuy
