The Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award. As of 2011 it has an remuneration of A$25,000. The winner of this category prize vies with 4 other category winners for overall Victorian Prize for Literature valued at an additional A$100,000.

The prize was formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction from inception until 2010, when the awards were re-established under the stewardship of the Wheeler Centre and restarted with new prize amounts and a new name. The Palmer Prize was valued at A$30,000 in 2010. The award was named after Vance Palmer, a leading literary critic. Palmer wrote reviews and presented a program called Current Books Worth Reading on ABC Radio. He also wrote books about Australian cultural life, including National Portraits (1940) A.G. Stephens: His Life and Work, (1941) Frank Wilmot (1942), Old Australian bush ballads (co-authored with Margaret Sutherland) (1951) and The Legend of the Nineties (1954). He was appointed in Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1947. The Palmer Prize was managed by the State Library of Victoria from 1997 to 2010.

Winners and shortlists

Winners of the Overall Victorian Prize for Literature have a blue ribbon ().

Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, winners and finalists

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2011	Kim Scott	That Deadman Dance	Winner	[1]
	Gail Jones	Five Bells	Finalist	[1]
	Roger McDonald	When Colts Ran	Finalist	[1]
	Craig Sherborne	The Amateur Science of Love	Finalist	[1]
	Dominic Smith	Bright and Distant Shores	Finalist	[1]
	Rohan Wilson	The Roving Party	Finalist	[1]
2012	Gillian Mears	Foal's Bread	Winner	[2][3]
	Anna Funder	All That I Am	Finalist	[2][4]
	Wayne Macauley	The Cook	Finalist	[2][4]
	Frank Moorhouse	Cold Light	Finalist	[2][4]
	Gerald Murnane	A History of Books	Finalist	[2][4]
	Carrie Tiffany	Mateship with Birds	Finalist	[2][4]
2014[lower-alpha 1]	Alex Miller	Coal Creek	Winner	[5]
	Michelle de Kretser	Questions of Travel	Finalist	[6][7]
	Richard Flanagan	The Narrow Road to the Deep North	Finalist	[6][7]
	Hannah Kent	Burial Rites	Finalist	[6][7]
	Tim Winton	Eyrie	Finalist	[6][7]
	Alexis Wright	The Swan Book	Finalist	[6][7]
2015	Rohan Wilson	To Name Those Lost	Winner	[8][9]
	Ceridwen Dovey	Only the Animals	Finalist	[8][10][11]
	Sonya Hartnett	Golden Boys	Finalist	[8][10][11]
	Mark Henshaw	The Snow Kimono	Finalist	[8][10][11]
	Wayne Macauley	Demons	Finalist	[8][10][11]
	John A. Scott	N	Finalist	[8][10][11]
2016	Mireille Juchau	The World Without Us	Winner	[12][13]
	Miles Allinson	Fever of Animals	Finalist	[14]
	Stephanie Bishop	The Other Side of the World	Finalist	[14]
	James Bradley	Clade	Finalist	[14]
	Steven Carroll	Forever Young	Finalist	[14]
	Charlotte Wood	The Natural Way of Things	Finalist	[14]
2017	Georgia Blain	Between a Wolf and a Dog	Winner	[15]
	Micheline Lee	The Healing Party	Finalist	[16]
	Sean Rabin	Wood Green	Finalist	[16]
	Philip Salom	Waiting	Finalist	[16]
	Jock Serong	The Rules of Backyard Cricket	Finalist	[16]
	Laura Elizabeth Woollett	The Love of a Bad Man	Finalist	[16]
2018	Melanie Cheng	Australia Day	Winner	[17][18]
	Steven Carroll	A New England Affair	Finalist	[17][19]
	Michelle de Kretser	The Life to Come	Finalist	[17][19]
	Sofie Laguna	The Choke	Finalist	[17][19]
	Michael Sala	The Restorer	Finalist	[17][19]
	Kim Scott	Taboo	Finalist	[17][19]
2019	Elise Valmorbida	The Madonna of the Mountains	Winner	[20]
	Robbie Arnott	Flames	Finalist	[21]
	Jay Carmichael	Ironbark	Finalist	[21]
	Morenno Giovannoni	The Fireflies of Autumn: And Other Tales of San Ginese	Finalist	[21]
	Gail Jones	The Death of Noah Glass	Finalist	[21]
	Melissa Lucashenko	Too Much Lip	Finalist	[21]
2020	Christos Tsiolkas	Damascus	Winner	[22][23]
	Yumna Kassab	The House of Youssef	Finalist	[24]
	Anna Krien	Act of Grace	Finalist	[24]
	Wayne Macauley	Simpson Returns	Finalist	[24]
	Tara June Winch	The Yield	Finalist	[24]
2021	Laura Jean McKay	The Animals in That Country	Winner	[25][26][27]
	Richard Flanagan	The Living Sea of Waking Dreams	Finalist	[28][29]
	Gail Jones	Our Shadows	Finalist	[28][29]
	Vivian Pham	The Coconut Children	Finalist	[28][29][30]
2022	Melissa Manning	Smokehouse	Winner	[31][32]
	Larissa Behrendt	After Story	Finalist	[33]
	Jennifer Down	Bodies of Light	Finalist	[33]
	Briohny Doyle	Echolalia	Finalist	[33]
	John Hughes	The Dogs	Finalist	[33]
	S. J. Norman	Permafrost	Finalist	[33]
2023	Jessica Au	Cold Enough for Snow	Winner	[34][35][36]
	Brendan Colley	The Signal Line	Finalist	[34][37]
	Sophie Cunningham	This Devastating Fever	Finalist	[34][37]
	Paul Dalla Rosa	An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life	Finalist	[34][37]
	Yumna Kassab	The Lovers	Finalist	[34][37]
2024	Hossein Asgari	Only Sound Remains	Finalist	[38]
	Eugen Bacon	Serengotti	Finalist	[38]
	Jen Craig	Wall	Finalist	[38]
	Charlotte Wood	Stone Yard Devotional	Finalist	[38]
	Jessica Zhan Mei Yu	But the Girl	Finalist	[38]

Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction (1985-2010)

Notes

References