Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction

The Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award. As of 2011 it has an remuneration of A$25,000. The winner of this category prize vies with 4 other category winners for overall Victorian Prize for Literature valued at an additional A$100,000.

The prize was formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction from inception until 2010, when the awards were re-established under the stewardship of the Wheeler Centre and restarted with new prize amounts and a new name. The Palmer Prize was valued at A$30,000 in 2010. The award was named after Vance Palmer, a leading literary critic. Palmer wrote reviews and presented a program called Current Books Worth Reading on ABC Radio. He also wrote books about Australian cultural life, including National Portraits (1940) A.G. Stephens: His Life and Work, (1941) Frank Wilmot (1942), Old Australian bush ballads (co-authored with Margaret Sutherland) (1951) and The Legend of the Nineties (1954). He was appointed in Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1947. The Palmer Prize was managed by the State Library of Victoria from 1997 to 2010.

Winners and shortlists

Blue ribbon () = winner.

• 2018^[1]
  • Steven Carroll, A New England Affair
  • Melanie Cheng, Australia Day
  • Michelle de Kretser, The Life to Come
  • Sofie Laguna, The Choke
  • Michael Sala, The Restorer
  • Kim Scott, Taboo

• 2017^[2]
  • Georgia Blain, Between a Wolf and a Dog
  • Micheline Lee, The Healing Party
  • Sean Rabin, Wood Green
  • Philip Salom, Waiting
  • Jock Serong, The Rules of Backyard Cricket
  • Laura Elizabeth Woollett, The Love of a Bad Man

• 2016^[3]
  • Miles Allinson, Fever of Animals
  • Stephanie Bishop, The Other Side of the World
  • James Bradley, Clade
  • Steven Carroll, Forever Young
  • Mirieille Juchau, The World Without Us
  • Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things

• 2015^[4]
  • Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Animals
  • Sonya Hartnett, Golden Boys
  • Mark Henshaw, The Snow Kimono
  • Wayne Macauley, Demons
  • John A. Scott, N
  • Rohan Wilson, To Name Those Lost
• 2014^[5]
  • Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
  • Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
  • Alex Miller, Coal Creek
  • Alexis Wright, The Swan Book
  • Tim Winton, Eyrie
  • Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel
• 2013 Presented in January 2014 (see 2014 entry) for books published in 2013.
• 2012^[6]
  • Gillian Mears, Foal's Bread
  • Gerald Murnane, A History of Books
  • Wayne Macauley, The Cook
  • Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds
  • Anna Funder, All That I Am
  • Frank Moorhouse, Cold Light
• 2011^[7]
  • Gail Jones, Five Bells
  • Roger McDonald, When Colts Ran
  • Rohan Wilson, The Roving Party
  • Dominic Smith, Bright and Distant Shores
  • Craig Sherborne, The Amateur Science of Love
  • Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance

Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction (1985-2010)

References