SOURCE: ABC.NET

Melbourne writer Jessica Au has won Australia's richest literary award, the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature, at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards (VPLAs) for her short but "masterful" novel Cold Enough for Snow.

Described by the VPLA judges as "open[ing] up new horizons for Australian literature", the novel also won the $25,000 prize for fiction on Thursday night, taking Au's total prize money to $125,000.

At only 98 pages long, Cold Enough for Snow is narrated by an unnamed young woman on holiday in Japan with her ageing mother, exposing both the tenderness and the distance in their relationship.

In 2020, the book won the inaugural Novel Prize – a US$10,000 ($14,000) biennial award for an unpublished manuscript open to writers around the world, that includes publication in Australia and New Zealand, the UK and Ireland, and North America. Cold Enough for Snow has since been translated into 18 languages.

"This book holds all the heft of a writer in full command of her craft," the VPLA judges wrote in their report.

In the fiction category, Au's book was up against This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham, An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa, Salonika Burning by Gail Jones, The Signal Line by Brendan Colley, and The Lovers by Yumna Kassab.

Au told ABC Arts she was "shocked" and "excited" to win the fiction prize – especially up against award-winning writers such as Cunningham and Jones.

"It's an incredibly intimidating shortlist, but it was wonderful to be on it in the first place," she says.

In her acceptance speech, at a ceremony at The Edge in Melbourne's Federation Square, Au called her win a "life-changing moment":

"Prizes, they do fade — you're left with ordinary life and ordinary time. And that's just time to think and time to read and time to be. And for me it's time to stare deeply into the eyes of my cat. And maybe if we're lucky, out of that time some writing comes — and that's when you can say all the things that are impossible to say in speeches like this."