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.
