ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

The 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards winners were announced today.

The $100k Victorian Prize for Literature went to a play: Counting and Cracking by S Shakthidharan & Eamon Flack (Belvoir and Co-Curious)

Category winners receive $25,000. The winner in each shortlist is highlighted in bold.

Fiction, worth $25,000 to the winner

• Act of Grace by Anna Krien (Black Inc.), see my review
• Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)
• Simpson Returns by Wayne Macauley (Text Publishing), on my TBR, see my review
• The House of Youssef by Yumna Kassab (Giramondo Publishing), on my TBR, short stories, abandoned at page 64.  See Kim’s review at Reading Matters.
• The Yield by Tara June Winch (Penguin Random House), see my review

Non-fiction, worth $25,000 to the winner

• Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us about Digital Technology by Lizzie O’Shea (Verso)
• Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson (HarperCollins Publishers)
• See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse by Jess Hill (Black Inc.)
• Songspirals: Sharing women’s wisdom of Country through songlines by Gay’wu Group of Women (Allen & Unwin)
• Tell Me Why: The Story of My Life and My Music by Archie Roach (Simon & Schuster Australia)
• The Girls by Chloe Higgins (Picador Australia), which won the People’s Choice award.

Drama, worth $25,000 to the winner

• City of Gold by Meyne Wyatt (Currency Press, in association with Queensland Theatre and Griffin Theatre)
• Counting and Cracking by S.Shakthidharan and Associate Writer Eamon Flack (Belvoir and Co-Curious)
• Them by Samah Sabawi (La Mama Theatre, in association with Samah Sabawi and Lara Week)

Poetry, worth $25,000 to the winner

• Birth Plan by L.K. Holt (Vagabond Press)
• Nganajungu Yagu by Charmaine Papertalk Green (Cordite Books)
• Yuiquimbiang by Louise Crisp (Cordite Books)

Writing for Young Adults, worth $25,000 to the winner

• How It Feels to Float by Helena Fox (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• Invisible Boys by Holden Sheppard (Fremantle Press)
• This is How We Change the Ending by Vikki Wakefield (Text Publishing)

Unpublished Manuscript, worth $15,000 to the winner

• A Million Things by Emily Spurr
• Hovering by Rhett Davis
• In Real Life by Allee Richards

Highly commended

Hmmm, no fiction in the Highly Commended section?

Non-fiction

Castaway: The extraordinary survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a young French cabin boy shipwrecked on Cape York in 1858 by Robert Macklin (Hachette Australia)

The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A Rodent History of Australia by Tim Bonyhady (Text Publishing)

The Thinking Woman by Julienne van Loon (NewSouth Publishing)

Drama

• Anthem by Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela (Performing Lines in association with Arts Centre Melbourne)
• White Pearl by Anchuli Felicia King (Samuel French, in association with Sydney Theatre Company and Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta)

Poetry

Archival-Poetics by Natalie Harkin (Vagabond Press)

The Future Keepers by Nandi Chinna (Fremantle Press)

Young Adult

• Highway Bodies by Alison Evans (Echo Publishing)
• Where the Ground is Hard by Malla Nunn (Allen & Unwin)

Unpublished Manuscript

• I’ll hold you by Jenni Mazaraki

Congratulations to all the authors, editors and publishers!