AustLit
History
Inaugurated in 2018, the prize aims to find and develop new Australian authors of literary fiction and nonfiction.
Latest Winners / Recipients
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Year: 2021
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Year: 2020
winner y The Rabbits North Sydney : Vintage Australia , 2021 21315222 2021 single work novel'The disappearance of Bo Rabbit in 1984 left the Rabbit women crippled by grief. Bo’s mother, Rosemary, and Bo’s younger sister, Delia, became disjointed and dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned eighteen.
'Now a teacher at a Queensland college, Delia’s life is dissolving. She gave up on her own art, began a relationship with a student, and is struggling to raise her three growing children, Olive, Charlie and Benjamin. And now she must also care for her mother.
'Despite it all, the Rabbits are managing, precariously. Or, they were until sixteen-year-old Charlie Rabbit disappears in the middle of a blinding heatwave. The family reels from the loss, and struggles to cope as the children’s estranged father, Ed, re-enters their lives.
'Only nothing is quite as it seems, and Charlie’s disappearance soon proves to be just that – a disappearance, or, rather, an unexpected bout of invisibility he’s unable to reverse.
'The Rabbits is a multigenerational family story with a dose of magical realism. It is about family secrets, art, very mild superpowers, loneliness and the strange connections we make in the places we least expect.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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Year: 2019
winner y The Spill Melbourne : Viking , 2020 19143795 2020 single work novel'In 1982, a car overturns on a remote West Australian road. Nobody is hurt, but the impact is felt for decades.
'Nicole and Samantha Cooper both remember the summer day when their mother, Tina, lost control of their car – but not in quite the same way. It is only after Tina’s death, almost four decades later, that the sisters are forced to reckon with the repercussions of the crash. Nicole, after years of aimless drifting, has finally found love, and yet can’t quite commit. And Samantha is hiding something that might just tear apart the life she’s worked so hard to build for herself.
'The Spill explores the cycles of love, loss and regret that can follow a family through the years – moments of joy, things left unsaid, and things misremembered. Above all, it is a deeply moving portrait of two sisters falling apart and finding a way to fit back together.'
Source: publisher's blurb
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Year: 2018
inaugural winner y Hitch Sydney : Penguin Random House Australia , 2019 15407605 2019 single work novel'A young woman stands beside a highway in the Australian desert, alone except for her dog and the occasional road train that speeds past her raised thumb. She runs from the people she has lost, from the unsaid, from who she was, but moves ever closer to the things she longs to escape.