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Indigenous poet claims richest state book prize

Feb 25, 2026

Evelyn Araluen, winner of the 2026 Victorian Prize for Literature — Evelyn Araluen won the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for her poetry collection The Rot. -PR IMAGE

Australia's richest state literary prize has gone to Evelyn Araluen, with her latest collection described by judges as a work of remarkable poetic intelligence.

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Goorie/Koori poet Araluen won the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for The Rot at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards on Wednesday night in Melbourne.

Araluen also won the $25,000 Prize for Indigenous writing.

"Her poems move with unsettling clarity through intergenerational pain, structural violence and the daily labour of survival, refusing sentimentality while remaining fiercely compassionate," the judges said in their report.

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.

Controversial 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, Dr 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.

2026 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS WINNERS

* Victorian Prize for Literature: The Rot by Evelyn Araluen

* Prize for fiction: Fierceland by Omar Musa

* Prize for non-fiction: Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family by Micaela Sahhar

* Prize for poetry: KONTRA by Eunice Andrada

* Prize for drama: Super by Emilie Collyer

* Prize for Indigenous writing: The Rot by Evelyn Araluen

* Prize for 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

* Prize for an unpublished manuscript: The Kookaburra by Charlotte Guest

* People's choice award: Discipline by Randa Abdel-Fattah