It doesn't quite have the clout of the Nobel Prize and the prize money falls short by more than $1.2 million, but, like the Nobel, the Melbourne Prize for Literature honours a writer's body of work.
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This year it has named five Victorian writers – Steven Carroll, Brenda Niall, Christos Tsiolkas, Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Alexis Wright – on a diverse shortlist for its $60,000 prize.
Carroll is a former Miles Franklin winner who last year shared the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction; Niall is an award-winning biographer of, among others, Martin Boyd and Archbishop Mannix; Tsiolkas is the acclaimed author of The Slap and won the first best-writing award for Dead Europe in 2006, Wallace-Crabbe is one of the giants of Australian poetry, and Wright won the Miles Franklin for her novel Carpentaria.
The Melbourne Prize is presented for literature, urban sculpture and music on a three-year cycle. Its policy of including a variety of forms of writing was reflected in the 10 works shortlisted for the $30,000 best-writing award, a mixture of memoir, non-fiction, drama, novels and short stories.
The authors are: James Button (Speechless), Patricia Cornelius (Savages), Andrea Goldsmith (The Memory Trap), Gideon Haigh (On Warne), Daniel Keene (Mother), Alex Miller (Coal Creek), John Safran (Murder in Mississippi), Maria Takolander (The Double), Abigail Ulman (Hot Little Hands), and Don Watson (The Bush).
This year a new $20,000 prize will be presented to the writer of an essay up to 20,000 words long. The shortlisted authors are: Robyn Annear (Places Without Poetry), Nick Gadd (The Unconscious of the City), Kate Ryan (Psychotherapy for Normal People), David Sornig (Jubilee) and Maria Tumarkin (No Skin).
The winner of the people's choice award will receive $6000. The judges are: Melbourne Writers Festival director Lisa Dempster, Readings boss Mark Rubbo, novelist Craig Sherborne, and Wheeler Centre director Michael Williams. The winners will be announced on November 11.
