Thank you to everyone who attended or tuned into the 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards as we marked this remarkable year of Australian literature across these beloved genres. If you missed the live stream, you can watch it back on our website now. tinyurl.com/VPLA2024LS

The Victorian Prize For Literature is awarded to poet Grace Yee for Chinese Fish!

The Award for Non Fiction goes to Ellen van Neerven for Personal Score: Sport, culture, identity (@UQPbooks) which judges called a ‘ground-breaking book that confirms, once again, van Neerven’s unrivalled talent, courage and originality’.

The Award for Fiction goes to Melissa Lucashenko for Edenglassie (@UQPbooks). Judges said Edenglassie offered an example of ‘luminescent truth telling’ that shines a light on the true colonial history of this country.

The Award for Indigenous Writing goes to Daniel Browning for Close to the Subject (@MagabalaBooks). The work was hailed as an ‘astounding contribution to arts journalism’ by the judges.

The Award for Poetry goes to @nolotusblossom for Chinese Fish (@GiramondoBooks). Judges praised this work for the way it ‘intelligently…braids its modes and forms, its feminist vision, and its literary and conceptual sophistication’.

The Award for Drama goes to @shakthidharan and @eamonflack for The Jungle and the Sea which the judges described as a ‘a rich and essential work of contemporary theatre’.

The Award for Writing for Young Adults goes to @twitofalili for A Hunger of Thorns (@AllenAndUnwin), a fantasy novel exploring female friendship that was praised by the judges for its ‘strong feminist lens’.

The next award goes to Ghost Book by @Remy_Lai (@AllenAndUnwin) for the new category of Children's Literature. Judges noted that Ghost Book’s ‘pacing, imagery and text flawlessly combine to create a memorable interactive reading experience of wide appeal’.

The Unpublished Manuscript award goes to Rachel Morton for Panajachel. The judges noted that ‘in a meditative and hypnotic style, Morton has drawn in-depth characters with complex relationships’.

To kick us off, @antloewenstein's The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World has won the People's Choice Award. (@paleslaboratory @scribepub)