Victorian Literary Awards Crown Winners
Australia's richest state-based literary prize announced its 2026 winners in Melbourne, highlighting the best in fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, and indigenous writing. The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards selected honorees from hundreds of entries across multiple categories.
Goorie and Koori poet Evelyn Araluen has taken home the top honor at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, receiving the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for her poetry collection, *The Rot*. Araluen's work, which also won the $25,000 prize for Indigenous Writing, is described as a "politically uncompromising" and "recalcitrant study of the decaying romances, expired hopes and abject injustices of the world." The fiction prize was awarded to Omar Musa for his novel *Fierceland*, a family saga centered on the children of a wealthy palm oil baron in Malaysian Borneo who must confront their father's legacy of environmental destruction. The nonfiction prize went to Micaela Sahhar for *Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family*, a debut memoir that explores Palestinian diaspora and the inheritance of memory. In other categories, Eunice Andrada won the poetry prize for *KONTRA*, a collection that reimagines the Filipina soap opera villain. The drama award was given to Emilie Collyer for *Super*, a play that explores the lives of three women with intimate superpowers who form a support group. This year, the award for Writing for Young Adults was renamed the John Marsden Prize in a special tribute to the late author. The inaugural prize under this new name was awarded to Margot McGovern for her feminist horror novel *This Stays Between Us*, a thriller set at a year 11 retreat in the woods. Zeno Sworder's *Once I Was a Giant* won the award for Children's Literature, a poetic picture book about memory and renewal told from the perspective of a pencil that was once a tree. The prize for an unpublished manuscript was awarded to Charlotte Guest for *The Kookaburra*, which judges called a "moving and authentically drawn portrait of grief, care and growing old." The People's Choice Award, a publicly voted honor, was given to Randa Abdel-Fattah for her novel *Discipline*. The story is set in Sydney and follows a journalist and an academic as they navigate issues of censorship and complicity during the Israel-Gaza War. Established in 1985, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards are Australia's richest state-based literary prize. Winners in each of the main categories receive $25,000 and are then considered for the overall Victorian Prize for Literature.
