Prize for Indigenous Writing (2004-)
Subcategory of Victorian Premier's Literary Awards
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Notes

  • This prize was not offered in 2011. In that year the Victorian Premier announced that the award would become a biennial prize worth $20,000 ($15,000 in 2010). Its announcement in September 2012 would be timed to coincide with Indigenous Literary Day.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2024

winner y separately published work icon Close to the Subject : Selected Works Daniel Browning , Broome : Magabala Books , 2023 26364773 2023 selected work essay interview

'This book is a collected works of one of Australia’s most accomplished media personalities. Chronicling his career since 2007, Close to the Subject presents a selection of pieces from Daniel Browning’s stellar career as a journalist, radio broadcaster, critic and interviewer.' 

'Alongside conversations with the likes of the late Archie Roach, Doris Pilkington, and Vernon Ah Kee, the book contains a series of critical essays displaying Browning’s talent as an Australian cultural critic and public intellectual. A range of previously unpublished poetry, memoir, art writing and play script is also presented, highlighting his vulnerable and passionate creative side in its own right (Publication summary)  

Year: 2023

Indexed selectively. Also shortlisted: Karlie Noon and Krystal De Napoli's Astronomy: Sky Country. Also highly commended: Leah Liu-Chivizhe's Masked Histories: Turtle Shell Masks and Torres Strait Islander People.
winner y separately published work icon The Upwelling Lystra Rose , Sydney : Lothian , 2022 24677646 2022 single work novel young adult fantasy

'Kirra is having vivid dreams about terrible things - things that start to come true. When she goes for a surf on the same break that killed her older brother, she somehow slips into a time and place that's completely different - but eerily familiar.

'Tarni is the daughter of a renowned warrior, with a special gift. Somehow she can understand this visitor and her strange language, even when no-one else can.

'Narn is preparing for an important ritual but is distracted by the girl who arrives with the dolphins. Why has Kirra been sent to this place? Is her arrival part of an ancient prophecy, like some believe?

'When a shadow threatens all living things in the land, the three realise they have an important role to play, as do their newly discovered magical powers. Working together will be their only chance to save the world.'  (Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Black and Blue : A Memoir of Racism and Resilience Veronica Gorrie , Melbourne : Scribe , 2021 20519254 2021 single work autobiography

'The story of an Aboriginal woman who worked as a police officer and fought for justice both within and beyond the Australian police force.

'A proud Kurnai woman, Veronica Gorrie grew up dauntless, full of cheek and a fierce sense of justice. After watching her friends and family suffer under a deeply compromised law-enforcement system, Gorrie signed up for training to become one of a rare few Aboriginal police officers in Australia. In her ten years in the force, she witnessed appalling institutional racism and sexism, and fought past those things to provide courageous and compassionate service to civilians in need, many Aboriginal themselves.

'With a great gift for storytelling and a wicked sense of humour, Gorrie frankly and movingly explores the impact of racism on her family and her life, the impact of intergenerational trauma resulting from cultural dispossession, and the inevitable difficulties of making her way as an Aboriginal woman in the white-and-male-dominated workplace of the police force.

'Black and Blue is a memoir of remarkable fortitude and resilience, told with wit, wisdom, and great heart.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Tell Me Why : The Story of My Life and My Music Archie Roach , Cammeray : Simon and Schuster Australia , 2019 16745125 2019 single work autobiography

'One of the most powerful and highly anticipated Australian stories to be told.

'No one has lived as many lives as Archie Roach – stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader – but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was.

'Roach was only a few years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of.

'In this intimate, moving and often shocking memoir, Roach’s story is an extraordinary odyssey through love and heartbreak, family and community, survival and renewal – and the healing power of music. Overcoming enormous odds to find his story and his people, Roach voices the joy, pain and hope he found on his path through song to become the legendary singer-songwriter and storyteller that he is today – beloved by fans worldwide.

'Tell Me Why is a stunning account of resilience and the strength of spirit – and of a great love story.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Taboo Kim Scott , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2017 11490897 2017 single work novel

'From Kim Scott, two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, comes a work charged with ambition and poetry, in equal parts brutal, mysterious and idealistic, about a young woman cast into a drama that has been playing for over two hundred years ...

'Taboo takes place in the present day, in the rural South-West of Western Australia, and tells the story of a group of Noongar people who revisit, for the first time in many decades, a taboo place: the site of a massacre that followed the assassination, by these Noongar's descendants, of a white man who had stolen a black woman. They come at the invitation of Dan Horton, the elderly owner of the farm on which the massacres unfolded. He hopes that by hosting the group he will satisfy his wife's dying wishes and cleanse some moral stain from the ground on which he and his family have lived for generations.

'But the sins of the past will not be so easily expunged.

'We walk with the ragtag group through this taboo country and note in them glimmers of re-connection with language, lore, country. We learn alongside them how countless generations of Noongar may have lived in ideal rapport with the land. This is a novel of survival and renewal, as much as destruction; and, ultimately, of hope as much as despair.' (Publication summary)

Works About this Award

Lucashenko Takes Out Vic Indigenous Literary Award Rachael Hocking , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 10 September no. 584 2014; (p. 26)

'A story about native title, love and belonging has won the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous writing...'

Melissa Lucashenko Wins Victorian Literary Award 2014 single work column
— Appears in: National Indigenous Times , 10 September 2014; (p. 19)
'Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Tim Bull last awarded the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing to Melissa Lucashenko at an awards ceremony at the Wheeler Centre...'
Holt Is On The Write Track 2008 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 8 October no. 436 2008; (p. 48)
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