Premier's Prize for Fiction

Winner

Heartsease by Kate Kruimink (Pan Macmillan Australia, 2024)

Judges’ comments:

Heartsease lays bare the interplay between grief, humour, hope, and despair of familial trauma. By turns tender and ferocious, soothing and cutting, the prose has an energetic, mesmerising quality that is both delightfully surprising and yet perfectly natural as it breathes life into the relationship between the novel’s protagonists Lot and Nelly. The judges were impressed with the range and depth of the novel, the skilful shifts in time and narration, while remaining perfectly readable and engrossing to the final chapter. They were delighted to announce Heartsease as the winner of the 2025 Premier’s Prize for Fiction.

Shortlist

Click on the book category tiles below to see the shortlisted books or view the full list (PDF 451.1 KB).

Heartsease

More about Heartsease

Limberlost

More about Limberlost

The Angry Women's Choir

More about The Angry Women's Choir

Heartsease by Kate Kruimink (Pan Macmillan Australia, 2024)
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott (Text Publishing, 2022)
The Angry Women's Choir by Meg Bignell (Penguin Random House, 2022)

Judges’ comments

Heartsease by Kate Kruimink

Heartsease lays bare the interplay between grief, humour, hope and despair of familial trauma. By turns tender and ferocious, soothing and cutting, the prose has an energetic, mesmerising quality that is both delightfully surprising and yet perfectly natural as it breathes life into the relationship between the novel’s protagonists Lot and Nelly. The judges were impressed with the range and depth of the novel, and the skilful shifts in time and narration, while remaining perfectly readable and engrossing to the final chapter. The judges were delighted to include it on this year’s shortlist.

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott

Limberlost initially appears to be a coming-of-age story about a young man hunting rabbits in order to purchase a boat. This simple premise, however, belies the novel’s deep emotional range and surprising formal complexity. Limberlost is a beautifully written and deeply rewarding novel about grief, loss, inheritance and family. The judges were particularly impressed with the novel’s realistic, emotional and nuanced portrait of mid-20th Century masculinity, and its intricate and purposeful narrative structure.

The Angry Women's Choir by Meg Bignell

The Angry Women's Choir is a bittersweet comedy about building community through music. An ensemble of disparate women come together to heal and to express their pain and, indeed, their anger at how they have been let down by the world, the patriarch and even their own bodies. There's nothing tidy about their anger, which is explored through acts of vengeance, social rebellion and public performance in a novel that is joyous, heartrending and inspirational. The judges enjoyed the rich characters and dark humour of the story, noting how rare it is for the suburbs to take centre stage in Tasmanian literature.