Melbourne author Jessica Au wins $125,000 for ‘quietly powerful’ novella
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- 28 Feb 2023
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Five of the eight winners at this year’s Victorian premier’s literary awards are debuts, with Au winning two categories for her second book, Cold Enough for Snow
Five of the eight winners in Australia’s richest annual literary prize pool are first-time authors this year, with a novella little more than 100 pages long collecting the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature.
Cold Enough for Snow by Melbourne writer Jessica Au also won the fiction category at the Victorian premier’s literary awards on Thursday night, bringing her total winnings to $125,000 for a book the Guardian’s critic Imogen Dewey described as “graceful and precise”.
The judges praised Au’s novella, which follows the finely nuanced relationship between mother and daughter as they travel through Japan, as “quietly powerful” and a “deftly woven novel from a writer in command of her craft”.
The book has already exposed Au to an international audience, having won the inaugural biennial Novel prize in 2020, an international award that guarantees publication in the UK, Ireland, US, Australia and New Zealand.
The slim volume was unanimously selected from some 1,500 entries to win the Novel prize, with the New York Times comparing Au’s talent to that of Albert Camus.
Cold Enough for Snow is the second book from Au, who works as an editor and bookseller. Her first book, Cargo, was published 12 years ago.
Among the categories of nonfiction, Indigenous writing, poetry and young adult categories, new writers dominate this year’s Victorian premier’s literary awards. Read More…
