Castlemaine-based writer Bonny Cassidy is among the 36 authors shortlisted for the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (VPLAs), with her work earning a place in the prestigious non-fiction category.
From over 700 submissions, Cassidy’s latest work Monument has been selected, alongside an impressive cohort of established and emerging voices from around the nation.
A powerful and timely work of non-fiction, Monument traces the complex consequences of colonial settlement across the generations of an Australian settler family of Anglo-Irish origins, and the impacts on the Indigenous people with whom they come into contact.
Bonny Cassidy Workshops:
- Memoir: A Masterclass – Saturday 22 February to Sunday 23 February, 9am-3pm
- Place-based writing for young people – Saturday 29 March, 9am-1pm
- More info here
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around the region here.
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Reflecting on her shortlisting, Cassidy shared, “It’s partly a memoir of growing up and being educated in a settler, non-Indigenous family. Experiencing slow learning about the details of that family history through the period of colonisation in Australia.”
Cassidy’s work is particularly notable for its nonlinear structure, which she described as “zigzagging across different eras”.
“It’s essentially a reflection of the way it felt to un-settle my education of family history.
“It started as more of a personal, genealogical piece of research but developed into elements of more general cultural, social, and environmental interest to fellow non-Indigenous Australians.”
The process of writing and editing the book spanned nearly 10 years, with Cassidy experimenting with various structural and stylistic approaches.
“The whole research composition and editing of the book took close to 10 years, over that period I tried a few different approaches to structure, style, and voice,” she said. “Earlier iterations were linear and chronological but it just didn’t work, it was quite stagnant and inert.”
Eventually, she began to play with the manuscript, cutting it up and exploring how the sections might come together in new ways.
“Each whole section is a story unto itself and treats its own voice and tone and story. It’s very deliberate in that way, that had a purpose.”
The 2025 VPLAs will offer a total prize pool of $315,000, including the coveted Victorian Prize for Literature, the evening’s most prestigious award.
Additionally, the People’s Choice Award, sponsored by The Wheeler Centre, will grant $2000 to the public’s favourite work.
“It’s a mix of feelings following this nomination,” she said. “For most writers, once something’s published, it’s almost like breaking up with someone; there’s this sense for me finishing a book where I’ve already emotionally detached from it before signing off final proofs. Sometimes it feels like an event that has already passed.
“I’m used to being a writer of poetry and the life of poetry collections in literary publishing in Australia has nothing to do with annual timelines. It’s a bit out of time, so that’s the lovely thing about shortlisting for awards or submissions is you get this unexpected recovery of a work you’ve packed up, it gives it a second life for you.”
The winners of the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards will be revealed later this year and voting is now open for the People’s Choice Award; have your say at The Wheeler Centre.
Winners will be announced at a special ceremony in Melbourne and live-streamed on The Wheeler Centre website on Wednesday 19 March.
