Sorrows get an airing

By Rhonda Dredge

Melbourne’s literary judges continue to favour harrowing non-fiction, even when a festive and stylish setting has been chosen for the announcement of the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

The $100,000 prize was presented at a garden party in the MPavilion, complete with pink bubbles and celebrity host Candy Bowers.

Author of the prize-winning book No Friend but the Mountain spoke to the crowd by phone.

“I am shoeless,” said Behrouz Boochani, who smuggled out his testimony by text from Manus Island where he is detained. “I want to show you where I am.”

His ironic commentary hit home among the well-heeled audience, which included at least three politicians, numerous literary judges, publishers, writers and readers, many in cocktail dresses for the illustrious occasion.

Last year The Trauma Cleaner by lawyer Sarah Krasnostein won the award, a biography of a transgender woman who suffered multiple traumas as a boy.

“The awards have always been engagé,” says the publisher of the book, Michael Heywood from CBD-based Text Publishing. “They’ve been after a political edge.”

Text had three books on this year’s shortlist of 28, two very readable novels and one compelling memoir. How do authors feel about being treated as contestants in a competition?

“No-one becomes a writer because they want to become rich,” Heywood says. However, a prize is very important for writers and “lovely for publishers. Awards are now commercially influential.”

Martin Hughes, the publisher at Affirm Press, bought the rights for the winner of the unpublished manuscript in the 2018 awards – Decay Theory by Christian White.

“It’s been our most successful book this year. We’ve sold the book into 18 countries, including China and it’s all through VPLA.”

Publishers bid for the rights and the only criticism he has of the process is that it should be restricted to Victorian publishers. He refused to reveal how much his company paid.

Publishers love awards for their publicity factor. Michael Williams of the Wheeler Centre said he wanted the occasion to be like the Logies without the crassness.

It seemed to work. Even authors were coming out of their shells, despite the vast difference between typing in solitude and celebrating on a warm summer evening with a crowd of well-wishers.

“They’re not mutually excusive,” says author Bri Lee, who won the People’s Choice award for her book Eggshell Skull. “I think the act of writing happens in solitude but the ideas and the progression of each art form happens as a group. It’s all labelling. You do the work you want and wear that.”

Elise Valmorbida won the fiction award for her novel The Madonna of the Mountains. She grew up in Melbourne but lives in London and works as a communication professional. This is her fifth novel.

“We’re in politically difficult times,” she says, and work is “reflecting these difficulties. Personally, I believe that truth is what you get in fiction.”

The VPLA is Australia’s most lucrative writing prize. “You can’t make a living at writing but you can make a killing,” quipped Candy Bowers.

No Friend but the Mountain is selling well in bookshops and many are moved by the bravery and persistence of both the author and his translator in gruelling circumstances. The proof will be in the pudding. It’s what’s between the covers that counts.