The Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, is a prize category in the annual

Victorian Premier's Literary Award The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Government with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry. As of 2013, it is reportedly Australia's richest literary ...

. As of 2011 it has an remuneration of 25,000. The winner of this category prize vies with 4 other category winners for overall Victorian Prize for Literature valued at an additional 100,000. The prize was formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction from inception until 2010, when the awards were re-established under the stewardship of the

Wheeler Centre The Wheeler Centre, originally Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas, is a literary and publishing centre founded as part of Melbourne's bid to be a Unesco Creative City of Literature, which designation it earned in 2008. It is named after its pa ...

and restarted with new prize amounts and a new name. The Palmer Prize was valued at 30,000 in 2010. The award was named after

Vance Palmer Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer (28 August 1885 – 15 July 1959) was an Australian novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic. Early life Vance Palmer was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, on 28 August 1885 and attended the Ipswich Grammar School. Wi ...

, a leading literary critic. Palmer wrote reviews and presented a program called ''Current Books Worth Reading'' on ABC Radio. He also wrote books about Australian cultural life, including ''National Portraits'' (1940) ''A.G. Stephens: His Life and Work'', (1941) ''Frank Wilmot'' (1942), ''Old Australian bush ballads'' (co-authored with Margaret Sutherland) (1951) and ''The Legend of the Nineties'' (1954). He was appointed in Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1947. The Palmer Prize was managed by the

State Library of Victoria State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in th ...

from 1997 to 2010.

Winners and shortlists

Winners of the Overall Victorian Prize for Literature have a blue ribbon ().

Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction (1985-2010)

Notes

References

{{Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Australian fiction awards Awards established in 1985