Winners of the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2022
Congratulations to all the winners of the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards!
WINNER OF THE OVERALL VICTORIAN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE AND
WINNER OF INDIGENOUS WRITING
Black and Blue by Veronica Gorrie
A proud Kurnai woman, Veronica Gorrie grew up dauntless, full of cheek and a fierce sense of justice.
After watching her friends and family suffer under a deeply compromised law-enforcement system, Gorrie signed up for training to become one of a rare few Aboriginal police officers in Australia. In her ten years in the force, she witnessed appalling institutional racism and sexism, and fought past those things to provide courageous and compassionate service to civilians in need, many Aboriginal themselves.
WINNER OF FICTION
Smokehouse by Melissa Manning.
A man watches a boy in a playground and pictures him in the grey wooden shed he’s turned into a home. A woman’s adopted mother dies, reawakening childhood memories and grief. A couple’s decision to move to an isolated location may just be their undoing. Set in southern Tasmania, these interlinked stories bring into focus the inhabitants of small communities, and capture the moments when life turns and one person becomes another.
With insight and empathy, Melissa Manning interrogates how the people we meet and the places we live shape the person we become.
WINNER OF NON-FICTION
The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar
Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder. After her mother’s death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents’ relationship.
They had been so unhappy for so long - should she have known that it would end like this?
WINNER OF POETRY
Trigger Warning by Maria Takolander
Comprised of three sections, the first summons a difficult personal history by conversing with poets - from Sylvia Plath to Anne Carson - whose dramatised confessions trigger Takolander’s own. The second part remains focused on the domestic, while redeeming that scene of trauma through a reinventing wit. The final section of this extraordinary book turns its attention outside, playing with poetry itself in order to confront the Anthropocene and the final frontier of death.
This is poetry that balances ruthlessness and lyrical beauty; poetry alive to its time and audience; poetry not to be missed.
WINNER OF WRITING FOR YOUNG ADULTS
Girls in Boys’ Cars by Felicity Castagna
Rosa was never really trying to hurt anyone, no matter what they said in court.
But she’s ended up in juvenile jail anyway, living her life through books and wondering why her best mate Asheeka disappeared.
A page-turning novel about a complicated friendship; a road trip through NSW in a stolen car; the stories that define us; and two funny, sharp, adventurous young women who refuse to be held back any longer.
WINNER OF PEOPLE’S CHOICE
Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim
Wen Zhou is the daughter and only child of Chinese immigrants whose move to the lucky country has proven to be not so lucky. Wen and her friend, Henry Xiao - whose mum and dad are also poor immigrants - both dream of escape from their unhappy circumstances, and they form a plan to sit an entrance exam to a selective high school far from home. But when tragedy strikes, it will take all of Wen’s resilience and resourcefulness to get herself and Henry through the storm that follows.
WINNER OF DRAMA
Milk by Dylan Van Den Berg
On the precipice of something life changing, a young Palawa man plunges into an exploration of self and Country.
Carried with the winds of a metaphysical Flinders Island-the place where it all happened-he is drawn back to the dawn of colonisation; to a woman who bore the brunt of the oppressors’ violence and then forward to her granddaughter, who buried the truth as a means of survival. Stirring up stories together, with parts both achingly sad and unexpectedly funny, what unfolds reveals by slow degrees painful but important truths.
WINNER OF UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT
- Fauna of Mirrors by Keshe Chow
