A win for the funny people: Australia’s richest writing prize adds new award

The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the richest writing prize in the country, will be a little bigger – and potentially a bit more joyful – with the inclusion of a new category in 2025, the John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing.

Named after the legendary Kiwi-turned-Victorian comedian, it will offer $25,000 to the funniest piece of Australian writing, with the winner able to contest for the main prize of $100,000.

Lorin Clarke, writer and daughter of satirist John Clarke, will serve as a judge for the new award.Credit: Simon Schluter

Clarke’s daughter, Lorin Clarke, who will serve as a judge of the new award, said she was thrilled the government was backing humorous writing.

“I definitely don’t want to trash any ‘serious work” or ‘important work’ with a capital I, but I do think the art of writing something that is funny is a very, very difficult thing to do – and it’s deeply rewarding for the culture,” she said.

“John Clarke created his own brand of humour, and it remains beyond compare,” Erin Vincent, chief executive of The Wheeler Centre, which administers the awards, said. “He was so skilful with words, I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a Victorian literary award in their name.”

This is one of just two prizes for humour writing in the country. The Russell Prize, administered through the State Library of NSW, is held biennially and offers $10,000 in prize money.

The Victorian Premier’s Literary Award also includes prizes for fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry, Indigenous writing, children’s literature and writing for young adults.

Previous winners of the top prize have come from multiple categories and include S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack’s Counting and Cracking (which has since become a hit play and is now on its way to New York) and Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.

Lorin, who is also a writer and recently published a memoir of her family, said the new category was a great tribute to her late father who honed his craft in Melbourne. Though he became a staple of New Zealand screens in the ’70s for his stereotypical Kiwi farmer Fred Dagg (a character so beloved the top award at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival is named after him), Lorin said, “he was basically performing without writing”.

“The man didn’t throw out an envelope, so I’ve got all his handwritten Fred Dagg scripts: he would always peter off after half a paragraph. He used to say, ‘I was writing, but with a crayon.’ ”

A new category in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards is named after late comedian John Clarke.

When he moved to Melbourne, he spent time embedding himself in the local creative scene and working harder on the words behind the image. That led to iconic on-screen work such as The Gillies Report, The Games and Clarke and Dawe, as well as a number of comedic books. In 1994, he wrote The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse, reimagining great poetic works as Australian classics. And in 2002 came The Tournament, a novel that imagines tennis matches between the likes of Albert Einstein and Vincent van Gogh.

Works like this don’t always get nominated for awards or spruiked in buzzy top 10 lists, Lorin said, “but I think there is something particularly rewarding about reading a book that lifts you physically out of yourself with laughter. It’s a gorgeous thing.

“When you read David Sedaris, or a monologue by Alan Bennett or a Kaz Cooke book … even things like Bridget Jones’ Diary, there’s a truth there that you’re uncovering.”

While Lorin stresses that awards aren’t everything – and are particularly subjective when it comes to something like comedy – they do provide awareness, institutional recognition and financial relief for writers in an increasingly difficult industry.

“Dad always said that, in some ways, he was really lucky that the right conditions existed for him to do what he was doing … He used to say that a lot of it was luck and kindness and generosity,” she said.

“I really hope this award can provide a bit of institutional support for somebody.”

Submissions for all categories of the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards are open now.

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