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In brief
- Araluen’s work, The Rot, was described as “formally bold, emotionally exacting and politically uncompromising.”
- Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah won the $2000 People’s Choice Award for her novel Discipline.
Australia’s most prestigious state literary award has been claimed by Evelyn Araluen, whose latest poetry collection has been praised by judges for its exceptional poetic insight.
Goorie/Koori poet Araluen was honored with the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for her work, “The Rot,” during the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards ceremony held Wednesday night in Melbourne.
In addition to this accolade, Araluen also received the $25,000 Prize for Indigenous Writing.
The judges commended “The Rot” as a work of outstanding poetic intelligence, noting its formal boldness, emotional depth, and unyielding political stance. They highlighted how Araluen explores new frontiers in contemporary Indigenous literature by skillfully blending lyricism, critique, and cultural memory, taking both precision and risks.
Her poetry, the judges remarked, traverses intergenerational trauma, structural violence, and the everyday struggle for survival with unsettling clarity, eschewing sentimentality while maintaining a fierce compassion. By engaging with tradition and embracing innovation, Araluen writes with a voice that is flexible, introspective, and acutely aware of the power and stakes of language.
The $25,000 fiction prize went to Borneo and Brooklyn-based Omar Musa for his family saga Fierceland.
Micaela Sahhar won the non-fiction category with her debut memoir, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family.
Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah won the $2000 popular-vote People’s Choice Award for her novel Discipline, with the book also highly commended in the fiction category.
While voting for the popular award was underway in January, Abdel-Fattah was removed from the line-up for Adelaide Writers’ Week, sparking a mass boycott that culminated in the event’s cancellation.
She is slated to appear at a replacement event in Adelaide, as well as the Newcastle and Sydney writers’ festivals later in 2026.
The award for young adult writing, renamed the John Marsden Prize in honour of the late writer and teacher, went to Margot McGovern’s horror novel This Stays Between Us.
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