Kim Scott became the first winner of the inaugural Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s richest literary award, for That Deadman Dance, a novel that had been presented with the 2011 Miles Franklin Award earlier in the year.
Scott’s acclaimed novel, which tells the story of the first contact between Aboriginal peoples on the coast of Western Australia with European settlers, beat off the challenge of five other novels to take the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction.
As recipient of the fiction category and $25,000, Scott’s novel was pitted against the winners of the other four categories – non-fiction, poetry, young adults and drama – for the overall Victorian Prize for Literature and a further $A100,000 in prize money.
The Fiction Shortlist for the Victorian Prize for Literature
Six novels had been shortlisted for the fiction award. Scott was clear favourite but recent results from other Australian literary prizes showed nothing could be taken for granted.
In spite of winning the Prime Minister’s award just a few weeks ago, there was no room for Traitor and Stephen Daisley on the Victorian list. Only Roger McDonald for When Colts Ran and Kim Scott featured on the Miles Franklin shortlist – none from the longlist was considered by the panel of judges in Melbourne.
Two of the shortlisted authors are debut writers of fiction. In presenting Rohan Wilson with The Australian Nogel Award earlier this year for a novel five years in the research, Tim Winton described The Roving Party as ‘brutal, stark but beautiful’.
Set in 1829 in Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania), the roving party of convicts promised freedom and land search out Aborigines intent on the massacre of the indigenous population.
An award-winning playwright, poet and writer of non-fiction, Craig Sherborne’s The Amateur Science of Love is a confessional tale, written in the first person, of the love affair between a young man and an older, married woman.
Sydney-born, US-based Dominic Smith, with his first novel published in Australia, also found himself on the shortlist. The third novel set in the 19th century, Bright and Distant Shores, is a tale of adventure on the high seas of the Pacific and in the museums of Chicago.
Smith has published two previous novels in the US, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre and The Beautiful Miscellaneous. His short stories have been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize.
Three times nominated for the Miles Franklin Award, Gail Jones was the only woman on the shortlist. Her fifth novel, Five Bells, is set in present-day Sydney and follows the lives of four young adults over one transformative day.
Category Winners and Runners-Up for the Victorian Prize for Literature
Historian Mark McKenna and An Eye For Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark, collected the non-fiction award for, according to the judges, his 'honest yet compassionate … work of great scholarship, insight and eloquence, ranking with the finest Australian intellectual biographies'.
Acclaimed novelist Cate Kennedy received the Poetry Prize for her collection, The Taste of River Water.
The drama award was presented to multi-award-winning Patricia Cornelius. First performed at fortyfivedownstairs in Melbourne, Do not go gentle… is a poignant examination of ageing as it juxtaposes the ill-fated South Pole mission of Captain Scott with the lives of six vibrant, opinionated residents of a nursing home.
Arguably, the biggest surprise of the night was reserved for the young adults award, where Cassandra Golds and The Three Loves of Persimmon beat off the challenge of Cath Crowley and Graffiti Moon, which had already won both the Prime Minister’s and NSW Premier’s Award.
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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