ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Big changes for the Victorian Premier’s Prize! 

Five awards, each with a purse of $25,000, for

• fiction (the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction);
• non-fiction (the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction);
• poetry (the CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry);
• drama (the Louis Esson Prize for Drama); and
• young adult (the Prize for Writing for Young Adults).

These category winners will vie for the Victorian Prize for Literature of $100,000, so the overall winner will take home $125,000, the most valuable writer’s prize in Australia – enough to support a writer to give up the day job for a while!

Nominations close Friday, May 20, 2011. I don’t think I can whip up a novel by then, alas…

NB There won’t be any Awards for an Unpublished Manuscript or for Indigenous Writing this year.  They’re going to be presented separately to coincide with the Emerging Writers’ Festival (May 2012) and Indigenous Literacy Day in September 2012.  They get less:

• $15,000 award for an Unpublished Manuscript
• 20,000 biennial award for Indigenous Writing

I’d like to know why these two have been sidelined like this…if they get equal status and publicity, ok, but why not include them with the others eligible for the big prize, and why not announce them at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival where they’d get international exposure?

Support for the City of Literature initiative of $250,000 per year will continue. 

See Thursday 21 April 2011 – The Wheeler Centre: Books, Writing, Ideas.