The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for 2020 have been announced at the MPavillion in Melbourne.
Valued at $100,000, the richest award (the Victorian Prize for Literature) went to the play Counting and Cracking by S Shakthidharan and associate writer Eamon Flack. Also winning the award for Drama, Counting and Cracking spans two cultures as it moves from Sydney to Ceylon (later Sri Lanka), from 1957 to the present day following the life of Radha. ArtsHub praised the production as ‘culturally, dramatically and comically rich’ with VPLA judges similarly impressed hailing it as ‘a post-colonial work of sublime generosity and humour’.
