Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2014

Welcome to the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Now is your chance to explore the Premier’s 21 - and to home in on the best of the best in Australian writing.

The Premier’s 21 is your ready-made summer reading list, comprising the shortlisted titles across all five categories in contention for the big prize. That’s eight weeks of great reading before the winners are announced on 28 January 2014.

Click on one of the titles or cover images below to learn more about the work and its author, and to read the judges' report. And don’t forget to cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award.

Do you notice a title you’ve read (or a play you’ve seen)? Add your own review, or read those written by our literary bloggers and reviewers from across Victoria. #premiers21

The Unpublished Manuscript Award was announced during the 2014 Emerging Writers' Festival.

The biennial Award for Indigenous Writing was awarded on 3 September 2014, coinciding with Indigenous Literacy Day.

With support from

Winners

People’s Choice Award Burial Rites, Hannah Kent
Young Adult My Life as an Alphabet, Barry Jonsberg
Drama Savages, Patricia Cornelius
Poetry Liquid Nitrogen, Jennifer Maiden
Non-Fiction Forgotten War, Henry Reynolds
Fiction Coal Creek, Alex Miller
Victorian Prize for Literature Liquid Nitrogen, Jennifer Maiden

Shortlisted Nominees

Prize for Poetry

Liquid Nitrogen, Jennifer Maiden
Autoethnographic, Michael Brennan
Travelling Through the Family, Brendan Ryan

Judges: Gig Ryan, Lisa Jacobson, Paul Mitchell

Prize for Fiction

Burial Rites, Hannah Kent
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
Coal Creek, Alex Miller
The Swan Book, Alexis Wright
Eyrie, Tim Winton
Questions of Travel, Michelle de Kretser

Judges: Blanche Clark, Tony Birch, Peter Mews

Prize for Non-Fiction

Gardens of Fire: An Investigative Memoir, Robert Kenny
White Beech, Germaine Greer
Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir, Kristina Olsson
Forgotten War, Henry Reynolds
Madeleine: A Life of Madeleine St John, Helen Trinca
On Warne, Gideon Haigh
Commended: Traditional Healers of Central Australia: Ngangkari, by Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council Aboriginal Corporation.