Poet and educator Evelyn Araluen has won a total of $125,000 at the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. She took out the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature and the $25,000 Indigenous Writing award for her second collection, The Rot.
Judges praised the book as formally bold, emotionally exacting and politically uncompromising. They called it an important contribution to Australia’s cultural conversation.
Araluen, who is also a co-editor of Overland said the collection takes on the political moment directly. “The Rot is … about political urgency and the social climate we’re in,” she said.
In interviews around the awards, Araluen linked the work to her experience reading new poems at Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2024.
She said she was heckled after speaking about Gaza on stage. She later described the writing as a way to sit with grief and anger about events she felt powerless to change.
The Araluen plans to donate part of the prize money which is taxed as income, to Sisters Inside. The Aboriginal led organisation supports incarcerated women and their families. She also plans to donate to groups providing relief in Gaza.
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Araluen previously won the 2022 Stella Prize for her debut collection Dropbear. She has been a prominent voice in contemporary poetry and criticism.
Elsewhere on the 2026 honours list, Omar Musa won the fiction prize for Fierceland while Micaela Sahhar took out the nonfiction award for Find Me at the Jaffa Gate, An encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family.
Eunice Andrada won the poetry category with KONTRA. Emilie Collyer won drama for Super and the People’s Choice Award went to Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Discipline.
