For the best work of fiction by a Tasmanian writer.

Winner

The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey (Text Publishing)

Judges’ comments:

The elegant assurance of The Labyrinth showcases Amanda Lohrey as a literary maker at the height of her craft. The novel tells the story of Erica Marsden’s move to a small coastal hamlet to be near her son, Daniel, who is imprisoned in a nearby gaol for a horrible crime. Erica, following the dictates of a dream, also plans a labyrinth to be built in the waste space of her coastal property. She works with an austere stonemason, Jurko, an immigrant who understands the aesthetic and spiritual demands of her project, in order to realise this plan.
The Labyrinth is both a quiet and extremely confident novel. It is a novel that pares back to the essentials of story and tells us how to write as well as how to live. The two parts of the novel follow the ‘Meander’ and ‘The Spiral’, the structural components of the labyrinth itself, which invites readers to walk with Erica in seeking out a new beginning, outside the awful confinement of her past and her present. The Labyrinth is a paean to building, to creation, in opposition to destruction and to waste. It is also a deep meditation on family and community, those we are born with and those we create, and on the possibility of reconciling with those from whom we have become estranged. Lohrey shows the healing that arrives through making. In exploring the idea of the labyrinth in relation to time as ‘a model of reversible destiny’, The Labyrinth reorients readers to our own lives and invites us to consider the possibility of alternative pathways.

Judges’ comments on the shortlist

Emerging from an incredibly strong longlist, the four shortlisted novels represent the breadth and quality of contemporary Tasmanian fiction. Each book marks an accomplished experiment in style and form, demonstrating the scope of what fiction can achieve. Although diverse in setting, style, genre, and approach, they are united in their concern with isolation, empathy, and community, and with the place-making made possible by a leap into the imagination. They each in some way work to reconstruct the patterns, tracks and traces of the past, whether personal, historical, or mythic. These novelists show that contemporary Tasmanian writers engage deeply with the world, considering it from a distinct perspective.

Judges’ comments on the longlist

The many entrants to the Premier’s Prize for Fiction indicate the confidence, calibre, and diversity of Tasmanian writers. This is reflected in the extraordinary longlist, which ranges across a variety of forms – collections of short stories, experimental fiction, genre and literary fiction. The selection also comes from several publishing outlets, including small, independent presses, commercial houses, and self-publishing. Within the entrants, and particularly the longlist, there is a discernible tilt toward evocative sense of place and toward articulating an historical imagination, as if inviting us to consider who we are and where we are from. This is a strong and fascinating longlist reflecting the health of an enviable Tasmanian literary scene.