The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction: Judges 2004

Kate Darian-Smith
Kate Darian-Smith is Director of the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne, where she is also Associate Professor in the Department of History. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 1939-1945, Memory and History in Twentieth Century Australia. Kate is also the Chair of the Board of Meanjin literary journal.

Delia Falconer
Delia Falconer's short stories have appeared in many publications, including The Age, Australian Love Stories, and Picador New Writing. Her first novel, The Service of Clouds, was a critically acclaimed best-seller and she has won several awards, including the Independent's Young Writer of the Year Award (in 1992), first prize in the Island Essay Competition (in 1994) and the HQ/Joop! Short Story Competition. Falconer has run writing workshops and taught creative writing at RMIT.

Peter Mews
Peter Mews was born in Perth and has worked as a television researcher and bookseller. The owner and manager of the Brunswick St Bookstore he is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Maritime and Bright Planet.