Kim Scott was tonight awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature for his book, That Deadman Dance by the Premier and the Minister for the Arts Ted Baillieu at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
The Victorian Prize for Literature is part of the revamped Awards system. The new award offers a $100,000 in prize money, making it the single richest literary prize in the country
Kim Scott was also the winner in the Fiction category, joining other cateogy winners Mark McKenna for An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark; Cassandra Golds for The Three Loves of Persimmon in the Writing for Young Adults category; Patricia Cornelius for her play Do Not Go Gentle and Cate Kennedy for her selection of poems, The Taste of River Water.
Each of the five winners across the categories of Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama, Poetry and Writing for Young Adults received a purse of $25,000, celebrating their contribution to the best writing to come out of Australia in the last 12 months.
The Premier congratulated Kim Scott and all the winners in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards saying, “I am very proud that the Victorian Prize for Literature, with its $125,000 in prize money is the richest literary prize in Australia.
“All the money in the world, however, will not buy what Victoria has in abundance: a strong, dynamic and distinctive literary culture. It’s a culture that has grown and flourished from the outset – one that is embraced and celebrated from the ground up by Victorians from all walks of life and every corner of the state.”
I congratulate all the winners and thank all entrants to this year’s awards for enriching our literary and cultural life.”
2011 has also been the first year that the awards have included a People’s Choice component, with readers encouraged to vote for their favourite works amongst the 21 shortlisted titles. Melbourne writer, Anna Krien, won this year with her Non-Fiction work, Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests.
For the second year, the Awards were been delivered by the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. Chrissy Sharp, Director of the Wheeler Centre said, “We are thrilled by the new streamlined awards and by the Premier’s generosity in inaugurating the Victorian Prize for Literature. Thrilling too has been the public response to these changes, with the greatest attendance for the awards dinner in recent years.”
Tamara Zimet at the Wheeler Centre
