The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award





Do you dream of being a published writer? Enter Australia’s most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript.

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award is one of Australia's richest and the most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of thirty-five. Offering publication by Allen & Unwin and prize money totalling $20,000, the Vogel Award has launched the careers of some of its most successful writers, including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears, Brian Castro, Mandy Sayer and Andrew McGahan.

Vogel-winning authors have gone on to win or be shortlisted for other major awards, such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Booker Prize.

As announced in The Australian on Friday 18th, the winners for the 2009 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award have been chosen.

From 200 manuscripts, the 2009 judges - Cate Kennedy, Margo Lanagan, Matt Rubinstein and Geordie Williamson - chose a shortlist of five novels; two winners were selected to receive the award.

Read about the winners and other shortlisted novels here

Previous Winners

Andrew Croome

Andrew Croome

Andrew Croome was born Canberra but grew up in Hobart and Albury/Wodonga. In 1998, he moved to Melbourne to attend university and is yet to leave. He has worked as a computer programmer, creative writing tutor and copywriter, and is soon to complete a PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Melbourne. Document Z, for which he won the 2008 Australian/Vogel Literary Award, is his first novel.
Stefan Laszczuk

Stefan Laszczuk

Stefan Laszczuk is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide. His first novel, The Goddamn Bus of Happiness, was the winner of the South Australia Festival of Literature Award for an unpublished manuscript, was published by Wakefield Press in 2004 and praised by The Age as an 'impressive debut'. He currently lives in Melbourne and is a singer in a band.
Danielle Wood

Danielle Wood

Danielle Wood was born in Hobart in 1972. She has worked as a journalist with newspapers in Hobart and Perth, as a producer with ABC Radio in Perth and Broome, and as a media officer for Tasmania's Parks and Wildlife Service. Her novel The Alphabet of Light and Dark was winner of The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award in 2002.
Andrew McGahan

Andrew McGahan

Andrew McGahan's first novel Praise (1992) was winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award.  Since then he has written the prequel 1988, and his third novel Last Drinks was shortlisted for multiple awards. In 2004 The White Earth was published and went on to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Recently published

Document Z

Andrew Croome

A masterful, taut and atmospheric novel of political espionage and intrigue, telling the story of the Petrov defection during the Cold War of the 1950s.

I Dream of Magda

Stefan Laszczuk

I Dream of Magda is a quirky, left-field, yet deeply felt and wholly engaging story of families, love, loss and grieving.

Tuvalu

Andrew O'Connor

A love story of sorts, Tuvalu tells the story of Noah Tuttle, who is glumly and aimlessly living a half kind of life in a cheap rundown hostel in the seamier margins of Tokyo.

Drown them in the Sea

Nicholas Angel

An evocative story about the dreams and desperate realities of life on the land in the Australian outback.

Troubled Waters

Ruth Balint

Troubled Waters tells the story of Australia's northern waters and their dramatic transformation in the twentieth century from a backwater to the most militarised and fiercely guarded region in Australia.

Alphabet of Light and Dark

Danielle Wood

Melding personal, family and colonial history, Wood's evocative and lyrical prose explores the past and place, searching and belonging, love, loss and grief.