The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award


Entries for 2008 are now closed.





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 Enter Australia’s richest and most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript.

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award is Australia's richest and most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of thirty-five and has launched the careers of some of its most successful writers, including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville,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.

$50,000 cash prize in 2008
To celebrate 50 years of Vogel’s in Australia this year, sponsors Vogel’s increased the cash prize from $20,000 to $25,000. Allen & Unwin matched this – bringing the total award prize money for 2008 to $50,000 plus normal royalties from sales.

Entries for 2008 are now closed

For more information, read the conditions of entry.

Download The Australian/Vogel Award entry form for 2008 (PDF).

Previous Winners

Belinda Castles

Belinda Castles

Belinda Castles lived for a period on an island in the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales, using this area as the basis for the fictional setting of The River Baptists. When not writing, she works as an editor, and lives with her husband and daughter near Sydney. She has a Masters in Novel Writing from the University of Manchester.
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

River Baptists

Belinda Castles

An engrossing novel of secrets, small communities and the consequences of living with the past.

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.