Victorian Prize for Literature results: Melbourne author wins prestigious award
MELBOURNE author Sarah Krasnostein has taken out the prestigious $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for her book exploring the life of a woman who cleans up murder scenes.
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MELBOURNE author Sarah Krasnostein has taken out the prestigious $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature for her book exploring the life of a woman who cleans up murder scenes.
The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in Death, Decay and Disaster also won Ms Krasnostein the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for nonfiction at tonight's awards ceremony.
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The book tells the story of Melbourne's Sandra Pankhurst, her journey from young man to ageing woman, as well as her transformation from drag queen and prostitute to respected businessperson.
Ms Pankhurst told the crowd gathered at MPavilion: “Rising above adversity is something we can all achieve with help and belief in oneself.”
A collection of short stories about identity and belonging, called Australia Day, won Melbourne GP Melanie Cheng the prize for fiction. Both books are published by Melbourne-based publishing house Text.
Other winners at tonight’s awards ceremony included the play Rice, by Michele Lee, which took out the prize for drama; Bella Li's Argosy, which won the poetry section; and Demet Divaroren topped the writing for young adults with her novel Living on Hope Street.
The winner of each category received $25,000.
The $2000 People's Choice Award went to the novel Ida by Alison Evans. Ms Krasnostein said her prize win was "a bit surreal".
"It's a wonderful affirmation for (Ms Pankhurst) that people embraced her story," Ms Krasnostein said.
"She spent her whole life not sharing that part of her story. In her words it was cathartic."
The book was four years in the making for Ms Krasnostein, a legal researcher who met Pankhurst at a forensic support services conference.
"I was lucky to find her at the time she was ready to tell her story. I'm so grateful for it."
American-born Ms Krasnostein, who lives in Melbourne's north, said she believed people could relate to Ms Pankhurst's experiences of shame and injustice.
Dr Cheng's Australia Day explores issues of racism, grief, infidelity, parenthood and ageing. A GP, Cheng said she was stunned to have taken out the prize in a strong field that included Sofie Laguna (The Choke) and Michelle de Kretser (The Life to Come).
"To be short-listed felt like a win to me," the Adelaide-born author said.
"When you are writing a book you never know if it's going to resonate."
She said the main themes of the book were identity and belonging and believed the book resonated because it came at a time when many countries are "going through something of an identity crisis".
She began writing the stories nine years ago and said working as a GP in the western suburbs of Melbourne gave her unique insights and experiences that she fed into them.
Originally the stories were written for Dr Cheng's own amusement, but then Australia Day took out the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Unpublished Manuscript in 2016.
Originally published as Victorian Prize for Literature results: Melbourne author wins prestigious award
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