Kim Scott’s novel That Deadman Dance took out the inaugural Victorian Prize for Literature last night at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards dinner. All five category VPLA category winners - also announced last night - were eligible for the prize.
The category winners were Scott for fiction, Cate Kennedy’s The Taste of River Water for poetry, Mark McKenna’s An Eye for Eternity for non-fiction, Patricia Cornelius' Do not go gentle… for drama and Cassandra Golds' The Three Loves of Persimmon for young adult fiction. Each category winner receives $25,000, while the winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature wins an additional $100,000, making it the richest literary prize in the country.
When accepting the prize, Kim Scott, whose novel about early relations between indigenous and settler Western Australians has already taken out this year’s Miles Franklin award, spoke of the importance of story-telling in bridging the gap between the Australian nation-state and the continent of Australia and its first peoples.