VPLAs 2022 shortlists announced

The shortlists for the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards have been announced.

The shortlisted and highly commended works in each category are:

Fiction

• After Story (Larissa Behrendt, UQP)
• Bodies of Light (Jennifer Down, Text)
• Echolalia (Briohny Doyle, Vintage)
• The Dogs (John Hughes, Upswell)
• Smokehouse (Melissa Manning, UQP)
• Permafrost (S J Norman, UQP)

Highly commended

• The Other Half of You (Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Hachette)
• In Moonland (Miles Allinson, Scribe)
• Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (Anita Heiss, S&S)

Nonfiction

• Coming of Age in the War on Terror (Randa Abdel-Fattah, NewSouth)
• Summertime: Reflections on a vanishing future (Danielle Celermajer, Hamish Hamilton)
• Black and Blue: A memoir of racism and resilience (Veronica Gorrie, Scribe)
• The Mother Wound (Amani Haydar, Macmillan)
• Buried Not Dead (Fiona McGregor, Giramondo)
• Another Day in the Colony (Chelsea Watego, UQP)

Highly commended

• Currowan (Bronwyn Adcock, Black Inc.)
• The Shape of Sound (Fiona Murphy, Text)
• Design: Building on Country (Alison Page & Paul Memmott, Thames & Hudson)

Drama

• Return to the Dirt (Steve Perie, Queensland Theatre)
• Archimedes War (Melissa Reeves, Darebin Speakeasy)
• Milk (Dylan Van Den Berg, Currency Press)

Highly commended

• Dogged (Andrea James & Catherin Ryan, Currency Press)

Poetry

• How Decent Folk Behave (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Hachette)
• Human Looking (Andy Jackson, Giramondo)
• Trigger Warning (Maria Takolander, UQP)

Highly commended

• Gravidity and Parity (Eleanor Jackson, Vagabond Press)
• m//otherland (Asiel Adan Sanchez, Revarena)
• Homecoming (Elfie Shiosaki, Magabala)

Writing for young adults

• Girls in Boys’ Cars (Felicity Castagna, Pan)
• The Gaps (Leanne Hall, Text)
• Tiger Daughter (Rebecca Lim, A&U)

Highly commended

• The Prison Healer (Lynette Noni, Penguin)

Indigenous writing

• Dropbear (Evelyn Araluen, UQP)
• Black and Blue: A memoir of racism and resilience (Veronica Gorrie, Scribe)
• The Boy from the Mish (Gary Lonesborough, A&U)
• Another Day in the Colony (Chelsea Watego, UQP)
• Permafrost (S J Norman, UQP)
• Homecoming (Elfie Shiosaki, Magabala)

Unpublished manuscript

• ‘Fauna of Mirrors’ by Keshe Chow
• ‘Lead Us Not’ by Abbey Lay
• ‘The Albatross’ by Nina Wan

Highly commended

• ‘Orangutan Ballet’ by C J Garrow
• ‘The Echoes of George Street’ by Elliot J Han
• ‘Strange Intersections’ by Soja Pitt.

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on Thursday, 3 February 2022. The recipients of the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, Indigenous writing and young adult categories will each receive $25,000 and go on to contest for the overall Victorian Prize for Literature, worth an additional $100,000.

The winner of the award for an unpublished manuscript receives $15,000, and the winner of the people’s choice award, worth $2000, will also be announced.

The 2021 Victorian Prize for Literature was awarded to Laura Jean McKay for her debut novel The Animals in that Country (Scribe).

For more information, see the Wheeler Centre website.

Category: Local news