Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2019 shortlists announced

Wednesday, 12 December 2018 Books+Publishing

The shortlists for the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards have been announced.

The shortlisted titles are:

Fiction

Flames (Robbie Arnott, Text)
Ironbark (Jay Carmichael, Scribe)
The Fireflies of Autumn: And Other Tales of San Ginese (Moreno Giovannoni, Black Inc.)
The Death of Noah Glass (Gail Jones, Text)
Too Much Lip (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP)
The Madonna of the Mountains (Elise Valmorbida, Faber)

Nonfiction

No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (Behrouz Boochani, Picador)
Staying: A Memoir (Jessie Cole, Text)
The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire (Chloe Hooper, Hamish Hamilton)
Eggshell Skull (Bri Lee, A&U)
Miss Ex-Yugoslavia (Sofija Stefanovic, Viking)
Axiomatic (Maria Tumarkin, Brow Books)

Poetry

Flood Damages (Eunice Andrada, Giramondo)
Tilt (Kate Lilley, Vagabond Press)
Milk Teeth (Rae White, UQP)

Young adult

Amelia Westlake (Erin Gough, Hardie Grant Egmont)
Between Us (Clare Atkins, Black Inc.)
Catching Teller Crow (Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina, A&U)

Prize for Indigenous writing

Common People (Tony Birch, UQP)
Too Much Lip (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP)
Taboo (Kim Scott, Picador)
Blakwork (Alison Whittaker, Magabala)

Drama

The Almighty Sometimes (Kendall Feaver, Currency Press, in association with Griffin Theatre Company)
Going Down (Michele Lee, Malthouse Theatre)
Barbara and the Camp Dogs (Ursula Yovich & Alana Valentine, Currency Press, in association with Belvoir)

Prize for an unpublished manuscript

‘Wedding Cake Island’ (John Byron)
‘Kokomo’ (Victoria Hannan)
‘Frontier Sport’ (Wayne Marshall).

Judges also highly commended a number of titles across all categories.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Melbourne on 31 January 2019. The winners in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, young adult, and Indigenous writing each receive $25,000, while the winner of the unpublished manuscript prize receives $15,000. All seven of the award categories go on to contest the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature. A people’s choice award, worth $2000, will also be announced on the night.

Last year, Melbourne-based writer Sarah Krasnostein won the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for her first book, The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in Death, Decay & Disaster (Text).

For more information about the award, see the Wheeler Centre website.

Category: Awards Local news