When Nukunu Ulararra writer and artist Wanda Gibson lived in Far North Queensland in the 1950s, she received three second-hand dresses every Christmas. These dresses came from the Lutheran Church, which ran the mission station where Gibson grew up. Among them, her favorite was a blue dress adorned with small yellow flowers.
Read Also...:
The 'wildly passionate' work of bestselling Australian poet Dorothy Porter celebrated in memoir
03-20, 2025
Bob Trevino Likes It is the remarkable story of a mistaken Facebook friend request, and the healing it gave
03-20, 2025
Two new plays show disability representation is improving but theatre still has a long way to go
03-20, 2025
The truth behind Adolescence, the new Netflix series exploring incels and Andrew-Tate-style misogyny
03-20, 2025Gibson's picture book, "Three Dresses," inspired by these treasured garments, won this year's Victorian Premier's Literary Awards (VPLAs) top prize of AU$100,000, as well as the AU$25,000 prize for children's literature. Judges described "Three Dresses" as "a true history, a truth told in cloth." With this award, Gibson became the first children's book author to win the Victorian Prize for Literature.
From her home in Hope Vale, four hours north of Cairns, Gibson said she was "very proud and very surprised" to win the award. "It's the first book I've ever written," she said. "Three Dresses," written and illustrated by Gibson herself, tells the story of her childhood holidays at the beach, where she and her family would climb sand dunes, swim, and fish during the day. At night, her parents would tell stories around the campfire about their experiences as members of the Stolen Generations and their lives on the mission station. The book also depicts her own life on the mission, working for free on the farm after school. "That's how we grew up: thinking everything was very hard," Gibson said.
As Gibson was unable to travel to Melbourne, her son Bruce accepted the award on her behalf. "Story has always been a big part of Aboriginal culture," he said. "Mum told us stories of our grandfathers, my grandfathers told me stories, and they still live in our hearts. That's how we communicate, we make sure the right information is passed down to our children through story and love. I want to thank Mum for taking the opportunity to work with her editor and thank the University of Queensland Press (UQP) for their support. I'm sure she's sitting on the couch at home in tears with all her grandkids around her telling her, 'Mum, you're richer than us now.'"
Gibson was one of four Indigenous writers to win at this year's VPLAs, with other winners including playwright Nathan Maynard, who won the drama award for his play *37*; Wiradjuri writer Jeanine Leane, who won the poetry award; and Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire, who won the Indigenous Writing Prize. Both Amy McQuire and Jeanine Leane spoke about ongoing violence against Indigenous people both in Australia and abroad when accepting their Indigenous Writing and Poetry awards, respectively. Leane, in accepting the award for her book *Gawimarra: Gathering*, spoke of the role of poets in times of crisis, including in moments of censorship and when minority groups are "threatened by oppressive regimes under our noses and abroad."
Other winners at the event included Fiona McFarlane for fiction, Susan Hampton for non-fiction, Emma Lord for young adult fiction, Chris Ames for unpublished manuscript, and Robert Skinner for the inaugural John Clarke Award for Humour Writing. *Three Dresses* grew out of Gibson's 2019 collaboration with Indigenous-owned fashion label Magpie Goose on a collection of screen-printed dresses. Gibson is also a master weaver, and she started painting at the Hope Vale Arts and Cultural Centre in 2010, earning a Diploma of Visual Arts at TAFE four years later. Friends encouraged her to join the art centre after her husband died.
"When I finished my first little painting – it was a very small one – a tourist came in and bought it, and that prompted me to keep painting," she said. Children's book author Maggie Hutchings saw and read about Gibson's designs with Magpie Goose and suggested the designs might work as a picture book. Gibson was thrilled with the idea and shared a short script she had already written about her childhood dresses. She can't pinpoint why she started writing that script: "I didn't have any idea of writing a book … just something told me: 'Write something down.'" She hopes to write another children's book – this time about her school life. "I used to get up early in the morning and clean the yard first and then go to school and eat there," she recalled. "If I've got time to live, I'll write that book," she said.
Fiona McFarlane won the AU$25,000 fiction prize for her third novel, *Highway 13*, a collection of interconnected stories about the ripple effects of a series of horrific crimes – the backpacker murders of the 1990s. "I'm really thrilled to have won – it's such an honour," she said. The writer was partly inspired by her long-time fascination with true crime podcasts, such as *My Favourite Murder*, which she became obsessed with after moving to the US in 2020 to work at a university. When the pandemic hit, she found herself in lockdown for 18 months, teaching remotely. *My Favourite Murder* became a strange source of comfort and connection, and she felt like she was part of a community of women all thinking about true crime. "True crime podcasts and true crime books are overwhelmingly consumed by women," McFarlane said in 2024. "I think it has to do with the anxieties of existing in the world as a female body and feeling like these things could happen to you. There's almost a sense of quelling some of the fear, or feeling like hearing these stories will help you stay vigilant."
Her own interest led her to think deeply about true crime stories and ask the questions: "Why are we telling these stories? Why are we listening to these stories? Can we tell these stories in a way that still respects that these are real events that happened in people's lives?" ABC Radio's Kate Evans has described *Highway 13* as "a series of short stories that read like a subtle novel about memory, grief, place, love and loss." She was "delighted and curious" about the response readers have had to the book, including "how many other people are also grappling with these same questions and are ready to have smart, vulnerable conversations about them." "I've been particularly pleased by the positive response to the book's tenderness and humour – for me, those qualities are as important as the horror."
The killer in McFarlane's novel bears some resemblance to Ivan Milat, who was convicted in 1996 of murdering seven young people – mainly backpackers – whose bodies were found semi-buried in the Belanglo State Forest in regional New South Wales. She recalled that the gruesome details that emerged during his trial were the Australian public's "introduction to a certain kind of evil or horror." "There was a period of time when that was all people were talking about," McFarlane said. "It felt like a cloud over us as a nation and the way we imagined ourselves to be innocent and happy and safe."
While McFarlane deliberately gave her killer "the shadow of Milat," she was not interested in getting inside the killer's head. Instead, she challenged herself to write a novel in which the killer rarely appears. The story is told through characters who are sometimes peripheral, such as a comedian who plays Milat in a limited series or the high school teacher of a survivor. "One of the ethical problems with serial killer stories is the tendency to give the killer himself a lot of airtime in a way that almost, if not glamorises, then mythologises them," McFarlane said. "Writing this book was about thinking about the impact not just on his direct victims, but on the culture around him, the friends and family of those victims, and the people who encountered them."
At a time when many local small publishers are facing closure, the winners list at this year's VPLAs demonstrated the vitality of work coming from independent publishers: they claimed seven of the eight winning books this year. One of those books was the winner of the inaugural AU$25,000 John Clarke Award for Humour Writing: *I'd Rather Not* by Robert Skinner. Skinner was pleased his book was published by an independent press: "I think a bigger publisher might have tried to force it into some category that was more saleable or something, because it's really not a memoir, it's not entirely essays."
The collection of pieces recounts Skinner's life after moving from the Adelaide Plains to Melbourne at the age of 28. There, he started a short fiction magazine, even though he hadn't sorted his own life out; he was sleeping at the cricket club or in his van. *I'd Rather Not* also includes stories about traversing the country with camels, trying to get Centrelink benefits, and throwing parties at his share house. "I don't think it's really about me," Skinner said. "I've always thought that I was writing about the state of things by using a slightly hapless character of 'me' to venture into interesting fiascos."
Skinner described writing the book as another one of his "schemes to make money" – like many of the jobs he writes about in *I'd Rather Not*, from washing dishes to picking grapes. His publisher had asked him a number of times if he wanted to write a book, and when he was "broke," he finally agreed. "I said very optimistically to him: 'I'll have it to you good next year,'" Skinner recalled. "That would have been my promise in 2017, so it took a while. One of the stories, we worked out that I was writing it at a rate of one word a day. It's hard to make a lot of money at that rate."
Although he's now a bookseller, "things haven't improved that much" since his days at the cricket club, Skinner said with a laugh. "When you're writing in Australia, in the back of your mind, the question is always, how much longer can I afford to do this? Now the answer is: a little bit longer."
Victorian Prize for Literature (AU$100,000)
*Three Dresses* by Wanda Gibson (University of Queensland Press)
Fiction (AU$25,000)
*Highway 13* by Fiona McFarlane (Allen & Unwin)
Non-fiction (AU$25,000)
*anything can happen* by Susan Hampton (Pancakes & Wattles Publishing)
Poetry (AU$25,000)
*Gawimarra: Gathering* by Jeanine Leane (University of Queensland Press)
Drama (AU$25,000)
*37* by Nathan Maynard (Currency Press and Melbourne Theatre Company)
Indigenous Writing (AU$25,000)
*Black Witness* by Amy McQuire (University of Queensland Press)
Children's Literature (AU$25,000)
*Three Dresses* by Wanda Gibson (University of Queensland Press)
Young Adult (AU$25,000)
*Anomaly* by Emma Lord (Affirm Press)
John Clarke Award for Humour Writing (AU$25,000)
*I'd Rather Not* by Robert Skinner (Black Inc)
Unpublished Manuscript (AU$15,000)
*I Made This Just for You* by Chris Ames
People's Choice Award – determined by online public vote on the Wheeler Centre website (AU$2000)
*I'd Rather Not* by Robert Skinner (Black Inc)
