Edenglassie and Personal Score win Victorian Premier's Literary Awards
We're thrilled to share the news that two UQP titles have won in their categories at the 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. The winners are:
Fiction
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko
Judges' comments:
Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie is an outstanding epic spanning five generations and two centuries. While interwoven narratives speak to the cyclical nature of time, the stories are deeply rooted in place and what lies buried in the ‘good Yagara dirt of the Ancestors’. This is storytelling that refuses to endure the ongoing silences and secrecies perpetuating racism and ignorance in this country.
The novel dances between brilliant humour, wit and fury. With an array of beautifully drawn characters, the lovable Granny Eddie and heroic granddaughter Winona in 2024, and the warrior Mulanyin and his beloved, Nita, in the past, the narrative threads together multiple perspectives – from contemporary activism, debates around identities, appropriation, tokenism and statues, to a tale of two lovers fighting to be together amidst violent massacres and poisoning in colonial Queensland. An immersive story with incredible heart and vision, this is luminescent truth telling – devastating, hysterically funny, and unforgettable.
Non Fiction
Personal Score by Ellen van Neerven
Judges' comments:
Ellen van Neerven’s remarkable memoir Personal Score seduces with its synthesis of poetry and political critique, grounded in a strong sense of place. It is essential reading for its insights into settler colonial violence, gender and sexuality, climate justice and – of course – football. And it is also a reflection on family, friendship, love, pride, and the joy of kicking goals. Van Neerven describes Personal Score as ‘an ugly book that was born of the ugly language that I grew up hearing in this country’. Yet it is a pleasure to read their account of the years during which ‘I am the parts of me that don’t know what I know now’ – and to learn from them what it is they now know.
