Melbourne Prize for Literature 2024 finalists announced
The Melbourne Prize for Literature has named the four authors in the running for the $60,000 award in 2024.
The shortlisted authors are:
- Patricia Cornelius
- Garry Disher
- π O
- Alexis Wright.
One of Australia’s most valuable literary awards, the Melbourne Prize for Literature is awarded every three years to a Victorian author whose body of published work ‘has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life’. This year the prize was judged by Monthly editor Michael Williams and writers Christos Tsiolkas and Evelyn Araluen.
Said the judges: ‘The impressive range of applications for the Melbourne Prize for Literature speaks to both the outstanding writers we have in this country and the integrity and reputation of the annual Melbourne Prize itself. For the three of us, it was an honour and a (sometimes daunting) pleasure to be part of this judging panel.’
The judges also considered entries for the Writers Prize 2024, worth $10,000 in 2024, which will be awarded to the author of ‘an essay of outstanding originality, literary merit and creative freshness’, with the winning essay to be published in Meanjin.
- Judith Bishop
Said the judges: ‘We were all very much impressed by the standard of essays submitted for the Writers Prize this year. There was real commitment to intellectual rigour and curiosity in the best essays, as well as a fearlessness and a desire to be creatively daring. It was wonderful to read such an invigorating collection.’
Overall, the judges said, ‘Assessing the Writers Prize and the Melbourne Prize for Literature side by side gives an opportunity to consider vital and urgent new writing in essay form, and then also the question of a lasting contribution and bodies of work by our literary greats. The field was very strong, and beyond the excellent shortlists, the range of entries were a pleasure to read and a reminder of the breadth and strength of writers working in this country today.’
The winners of the Melbourne Prize for Literature and the Writers Prize, as well as the recipients of the prize’s inaugural Falls Creek Writers Residencies and the $1500 Civic Choice Award, will be announced on 14 November. All non-winning finalists will be awarded $1000.
Christos Tsiolkas won the last Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2021, while Araluen won a $20,000 Professional Development Award, and Eloise Grills won the 2021 Writer’s Prize.
More information about the awards is available on the prize website.
Category: Awards Local news
