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2012 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards shortlists announced

Thursday, 9 August 2012   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

The shortlists for this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards have been announced.

The shortlisted titles—collectively known as ‘the Premier’s 21’—are:

Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction ($25,000)

  • Foal’s Bread (Gillian Mears, A&U)
  • A History of Books (Gerald Murnane, Giramondo)
  • The Cook (Wayne Macauley, Text)
  • Mateship with Birds (Carrie Tiffany, Picador)
  • All That I Am (Anna Funder, Penguin)
  • Cold Light (Frank Moorhouse, Vintage)

 

Nettie Palmer Prize for Nonfiction ($25,000)

  • The Biggest Estate on Earth (Bill Gammage, A&U)
  • The Hall of Uselessness (Simon Leys, Black Inc.)
  • Her Father’s Daughter (Alice Pung, Black Inc.)
  • Adelaide (Kerryn Goldsworthy, NewSouth)
  • 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia (James Boyce, Black Inc.)
  • True North: The Story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack (Brenda Niall, Text)

 

Prize for Writing for Young Adults ($25,000)

  • All I Ever Wanted (Vikki Wakefield, Text)
  • The Shadow Girl (John Larkin, Woolshed Press)
  • The Shiny Guys (Doug MacLeod, Penguin)

 

CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry ($25,000)

  • Southern Barbarians (John Mateer, Giramondo)
  • Vishvarupa (Michelle Cahill, Five Islands Press)
  • Armour (John Kinsella, Picador)

 

Louis Esson Prize for Drama ($25,000)

  • National Interest (Aiden Fennessy)
  • A Golem Story (Lally Katz)
  • Boxman (Daniel Keene).

 

The winners of this year’s awards will be announced at a ceremony on 16 October.

As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, the 2012 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, worth $15,000, was awarded to The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion earlier this year during the Emerging Writers’ Festival. Text Publishing has acquired world rights to The Rosie Project, as well as two other novels by Simsion.

The winner of Victorian Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing, worth $20,000, will be announced on Indigenous Literacy Day on 5 September. The biennial award was last awarded in 2010 to Legacy by Larissa Behrendt (UQP).

The winners of the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama and young adult categories will be in the running for the Victorian Prize for Literature, worth $100,000. The inaugural Victorian Prize for Literature was presented to That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Picador) in 2011.

The general public is now able to vote for this year’s People’s Choice Award. Votes can be cast at the Wheeler Centre website.

For more information about the awards, click here.

 

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Category: Local news