Victorian Premier's Literary Award
The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Government with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry.
They were established in 1985 by John Cain, the Premier of Victoria at that time, to mark the centenary of the births of Vance and Nettie Palmer, two of Australia's best-known writers and critics who both made significant contributions to Victorian and Australian literary culture.
From 1986 through till 1997 they were presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
In 1997 the administration of the awards was transferred to the State Library of Victoria. By 2004 the award's total prize money was A$180,000.
In 2011, the winers of the main five categories - fiction (the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction), non-fiction (the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction), poetry (the CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry), drama (the Louis Esson Prize for Drama), and young adult (the Prize for Writing for Young Adults) - contested for the Victorian Prize for Literature. Category winners received $25,000, while the Victorian Prize carried a purse of $100,000, resulting in the overall winner taking home $125,000.
Read more about Victorian Premier's Literary Award: Awards Categories
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