MUD Literary Prize (2018-)
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

History

Inaugurated in 2018, the MUD Literary Prize is administered by the MUD Literary Club, a philanthropic organisation that supports emerging Australian writers. The aim of the MUD Literary Prize is to support a debut literary novelist.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2024

with additional judges Andrew Saies and Noel Grieve.
winner y separately published work icon Girl in a Pink Dress Kylie Needham , Melbourne : Hamish Hamilton , 2023 25548579 2023 single work novel

'Frances is an artist in her forties living a quiet life in a remote mountain town in NSW, far away from the glittering lights and famous personalities of the Sydney art world she once knew. When an invitation arrives from a former lover to attend his exhibition at a state gallery, Frances is plunged back into the past, where a single irrevocable act changed the course of her story.

'Told across two time periods, Frances's story wrestles with themes of power and privilege, womanhood and motherhood, artistic doubt, the male gaze upon the female body, and the commodification of art. It looks at the fraught relationships between artists and their muses, the sacrifices of a life devoted to art, and asks if it is ever really possible for two ambitious artists to thrive in one relationship.' (Publication summary) 

Year: 2023

with additional judges Noel Grieve and Andrew Saies.
winner y separately published work icon All That’s Left Unsaid Tracey Lien , Chatswood : HQ Fiction , 2022 23664058 2022 single work novel crime

'‘Just let him go.’

'Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends, in a neighbourhood growing more unpredictable by the day. That night, Denny – optimistic, guileless, valedictorian Denny – is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, a racist police force, and the worst heroin epidemic in Australian history.

'Returning home to Cabramatta for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by her brother’s case: several people were present at Denny’s murder, but each bystander claims to have seen nothing.

'Ky sets aside her grief and determines to track down the witnesses herself. Peeling back the layers of the place that shaped her, Ky confronts the complex traumas weighing on those present the night Denny died, and finds that the seeds of violence that led to his death were planted well before that fateful night: by colonialism, by the war in Vietnam, and by the choices they’ve all made to survive.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Love and Virtue Diana Reid , Ultimo : Ultimo Press , 2021 21618821 2021 single work novel

'"Whenever I say I was at university with Eve, people ask me what she was like, sceptical perhaps that she could have always been as whole and self-assured as she now appears. To which I say something like: ‘People are infinitely complex.’ But I say it in such a way—so pregnant with misanthropy—that it’s obvious I hate her."

'Michaela and Eve are two bright, bold women who befriend each other their first year at a residential college at university, where they live in adjacent rooms. They could not be more different; one assured and popular – the other uncertain and eager-to-please. But something happens one night in O-week – a drunken encounter, a foggy memory that will force them to confront the realities of consent and wrestle with the dynamics of power.

'Initially bonded by their wit and sharp eye for the colleges’ mix of material wealth and moral poverty, Michaela and Eve soon discover how fragile friendship is, and how capable of betrayal they both are.

'Written with a strikingly contemporary voice that is both wickedly clever and incisive, issues of consent, class and institutional privilege, and feminism become provocations for enduring philosophical questions we face today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip Williams , South Melbourne : Affirm Press , 2020 18575183 2020 single work novel historical fiction

'Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid’ flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

'Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.' (Publication summary) 

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon Master of My Fate Sienna Brown , Melbourne : Penguin Random House Australia , 2019 15408170 2019 single work novel historical fiction

'William Buchanan lived an extraordinary life: born a slave on a plantation in Jamaica, he escaped the gallows more than once, took part in the rebellion that led to the end of slavery in Jamaica, was transported to the other side of the world as punishment, tried his hand at robbing stage coaches, and finally won true freedom on Australian soil.

'Sienna Brown came across William’s story while working in Hyde Park Barracks, the very building he was transported to in Sydney. Sharing his Jamaican background, Sienna was inspired to write Master of My Fate, a novel based on his story.

'Told through William’s voice, this is a lyrical, historical, coming of age story about learning to fight for your rights – and finally becoming the master of your own fate.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

X