Australia’s talented literary community has been celebrated through the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
The awards recognise literary excellence through Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Indigenous Writing, Children’s Literature and Writing for Young Adults categories – the winner of each category then goes in the running to win the overall prize, the Victorian Prize for Literature, worth $100,000.
This year Goorie and Koori poet, editor and educator Evelyn Araluen took home the program’s most prestigious award, the Victorian Prize for Literature, for the poetry collection The Rot. Araluen was also awarded the Prize for Indigenous Writing.
The Rot drew praise from judges for its ‘vulnerable, taut and uncompromising’ power. A former recipient of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter Fellowship, Araluen was among several Victorian-based writers celebrated this year including Emilie Collyer, Zeno Sworder, Micaela Sahhar and Charlotte Guest, who were also named winners in their respective categories.
This year’s Writing for Young Adults category was renamed the John Marsden Prize, in a special tribute to the acclaimed writer, teacher and mentor. Margot McGovern’s gripping horror novel This Stays Between Us was awarded the John Marsden Prize for Writing for Young Adults.
Omar Musa’s ‘expansive and tenderly intimate glorious family saga’, Fierceland, took out the Fiction category and Micaela Sahhar, another Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship recipient, was recognised in Non-Fiction for her debut memoir, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family.
Eunice Andrada was awarded the Prize for Poetry for her third collection, KONTRA; the hilarious and poignant Super by Emilie Collyer received the Prize for Drama; and Zeno Sworder whose ‘luminous elegy on memory, loss and regeneration,’ Once I Was a Giant, won the Prize for Children’s Literature.
Described by the judges as a ‘moving and authentically drawn portrait of grief, care and growing old,’ Charlotte Guest’s The Kookaburra was awarded the Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript. A writer and bookseller from Geelong, Guest follows in the footsteps of previous VPLA Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript winners Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Project), Jane Harper (The Dry) and Maxine Beneba Clarke (Foreign Soil), amongst many other now bestselling authors.
The 2026 People’s Choice Award winner was Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Discipline. Nominated as Highly Commended in the Fiction category, Discipline was nominated by the voting public and awarded a cash prize of $2,000, funded by The Wheeler Centre.
The winners of the Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Indigenous Writing, Children’s Literature and the John Marsden Prize for Writing for Young Adults categories each receive $25,000. The Award for an Unpublished Manuscript carries a $15,000 prize and includes a two-week residency at McCraith House in Dromana, delivered in partnership between The Wheeler Centre and RMIT Culture.
The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards are delivered by The Wheeler Centre on behalf of the Victorian Government. For more information, visit wheelercentre.com