Peter CAREY wins 2006 Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction

TWO-TIME Booker Prize winner Peter Carey today was awarded the fiction prize in the 2006 Victorian Premier’s Vance Palmer Literary Awards. Carey’s book, Theft: A Love Story (2006) won the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, his second win. The first was for A True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.

Helen Ennis was awarded the Nettie Palmer Prize for Nonfiction for her Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss and Photography. John Tranter won the C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry for Urban Myths: 210 Poems, while Ursula Dubosarsky took the Young Fiction Award for Theodora’s Gift. Journalist David Marr received the Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate for his piece on human rights, “Is the Media Asleep?", while Swallow the Air won the Indigenous Writing award. The Louis Esson Prize for Drama went to Stephen Sewell for Three Furies: Scenes from the Life of Francis Bacon.