Evelyn Araluen has won both the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature and the $25,000 Indigenous writing category at this year’s Victorian premier’s literary awards, for her second poetry collection The Rot.
Selected from almost 700 books entered for the prize, The Rot won the two awards on Thursday night, having also been shortlisted in the poetry category. The Goorie and Koori poet won the 2022 Stella prize, and was shortlisted for three premier’s literary prizes, for her debut collection Dropbear.
Speaking before she was aware she had also won the overall prize, Araluen told Guardian Australia she was “excited” to have won the $25,000 Indigenous writing category. Asked if she felt she might have a chance at the top prize, she replied: “Oh God no, I’m not getting a look in at that. I’ll be quite comfortable with my prize, thank you.”
The judges called The Rot “a work of remarkable poetic intelligence; formally bold, emotionally exacting and politically uncompromising” and “a vital intervention in this country’s cultural conversation.” It was written in the span of a few months last year, and was inspired by her experience reading two poems at Adelaide writers’ week in 2024, where she was heckled for referring to Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza as a genocide on stage.
“These poems were about witnessing a genocide and the feeling of inertia and grief and rage and passivity that sits in the body when you feel so powerless against our government’s complicity in that genocide,” Araluen said. “I had people get up and leave and shout at me and have a go at me … I shouted back and felt so enraged. But I had incredibly beautiful people coming up to me afterwards, some of them crying, saying the poems had helped them understand how they have been feeling.”
After she won the Stella for Dropbear, Araluen spoke about how she had been “one paycheck away from complete poverty”, juggling multiple temporary jobs in the arts while working on her debut. She has since taken a full-time job as an academic, which she said initially “felt like a compromise” but had “allowed me the safety to be able to write more.”
She worked on The Rot “after work, after dinner, in the bath” for months, though she now admits that such prolonged focus on such a traumatic subject was “irresponsible of me.”
“I do not recommend drinking wine in the bath and listening to Mitski and crying and calling that a writing practice,” she added.
The Rot reflects “a really panicked, distressed window of a time, that I hope we all look back on with horror and despair and a real sense of regret,” Araluen said.
“I tried to make sure that the book very clearly documented that we knew what was happening in our names and we did not stop it,” she added. “I hope that this book dates. I hope it reads as incredibly naive and doesn’t catch a glimpse of the political ambitions that are going to be realised in the future. But if it doesn’t, I want it to be a record of a very, very uncomfortable truth that we’re all going to have to live with.”
Araluen also called on the Australian government to reform the way arts prizes are taxed. Some, like the prime minister’s literary awards, are tax-free, but most, including the Stella and all the state premier literary awards, are taxed as income.
“Winning the Stella prize was really fantastic but it was taxed at nearly 50%,” she said. “When you spend sometimes years of your life working on something, and you have good fortune that you can’t have possibly planned for or anticipated, the impact of a prize can sometimes be quite disruptive financially.”
“Other countries have really intelligent taxation laws that allow artists to continue working in periods of heightened prosperity versus significantly lower incomes. This is not me saying, I don’t believe in tax. Obviously tax is incredibly important. But a lot of people assumed I must suddenly be rich after the Stella, and once you take out tax and Hecs debts and I needed to get my teeth fixed and we had used our superannuation to survive Covid … we don’t really have the advantage of solid, sustainable investment we can rely on.”
In other categories at the Victorian premier’s literary awards, this year’s $2,000 people’s choice award went to Discipline by Randa Abdel-Fattah, the Australian-Palestinian academic who was controversially dumped from this year’s Adelaide writers’ week, a decision that triggered the collapse of the annual literary event.
Omar Musa won the fiction prize for his novel Fierceland, about two siblings from Malaysian Borneo who must grapple with the legacy of their father, a palm-oil baron, after his death. The judges praised the novel’s “glittering prose and sweeping, ambitious form”.
The nonfiction prize went to Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family by Australian-Palestinian writer Micaela Sahhar, which the judges described as “a remarkable debut memoir that is simultaneously a work of poetry in its lyricism and feeling.”
The children’s literature category was won by Zeno Sworder for his picture book Once I Was a Giant. The young adult prize was renamed the John Marsden prize this year, in tribute to the famed young adult author who died in December 2024; it was won by Margot McGovern for her horror novel This Stays Between Us.
The poetry prize went to Filipina-Australian poet Eunice Andrada for her collection KONTRA, playwright Emilie Collyer won the drama category for her play Super, and the prize for an unpublished manuscript went to The Kookaburra by Charlotte Guest.
The Victorian premier’s literary awards have been running since 1985.
2026 Victorian premier’s literary awards: winners list
Victorian prize for literature: The Rot by Evelyn Araluen
Fiction: Fierceland by Omar Musa
Non-fiction: Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family by Micaela Sahhar
Poetry: KONTRA by Eunice Andrada
Drama: Super by Emilie Collyer
Indigenous writing: The Rot by Evelyn Araluen
Children’s literature: Once I Was a Giant by Zeno Sworder
John Marsden prize for writing for young adults: This Stays Between Us by Margot McGovern
Unpublished manuscript: The Kookaburra by Charlotte Guest
People’s choice award: Discipline by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
