 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2013) |
The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were an Australian suite of literary awards inaugurated in 1999 and disestablished in 2012. It was one of the most generous suites of literary awards within Australia, with $225,000 in prize money across 14 categories with prizes up to $25,000 in some categories. The awards upon their establishment incorporated a number of pre-existing awards including the Steele Rudd Award for the best Australian collection of new short fiction and the David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writing.
The awards were established by Peter Beattie, the then Premier of Queensland in 1999[1] and abolished by Premier Campbell Newman, shortly after winning the 2012 Queensland state election.[2]
In response, the Queensland writing community established the Queensland Literary Awards to ensure the Awards continued in some form.[3] The judging panels remained largely the same, and University of Queensland Press committed to continue to publish the winners of the Emerging Queensland Author Manuscript Award and the Unpublished Indigenous Writer, David Unaipon Award.[4]