It is perhaps ironic that the first Australian Literary Award would be initiated and funded by an Australian woman writer of remarkable élan, and the first recipient of the award would be the dominant and redoubtable Australian male author Patrick White. Miles Franklin (1879–1954) maybe regarded as Australia's first feminist woman writer, a pioneering figure, who not only broke the silence but also pushed against the boundaries and borders not without controversy in many cases. Spanning more than a century of activist writing Miles Franklin, Katherine Susannah Pritchard, Jean Devanny, Eleanor Dark and Germaine Greer can be assessed as intrepid voices of Australian women's writing. Remarkable too is their commitment to and disenchantment with Marxist ideology as supporters and members of the Australian Communist Party.