The longlist for the 2013 ALS Gold Medal has been announced.

The ALS Gold Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year.

The Medal was inaugurated by the Australian Literature Society, which was founded in Melbourne in 1899 and incorporated into the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in 1982.

The winner receives a gold medal.

The 2013 longlisted titles are:

• Lola Bensky (Lily Brett, Hamish Hamilton)
• Darkness on the Edge of Town (Jessie Cole, Fourth Estate)
• Questions of Travel (Michelle de Kretser, A&U)
• Montebello (Robert Drewe, Hamish Hamilton)
• The Engagement (Chloe Hooper, Hamish Hamilton)
• Cumulus: Collected Poems (Robert Gray, John Leonard Press)
• Like a House on Fire (Cate Kennedy, Scribe)
• Lost Voices (Christopher Koch, Fourth Estate)
• The Mountain (Drusilla Modjeska, Vintage)
• The History of Books (Gerald Murnane, Giramondo)
• The Fine Colour of Rust (P A O’Reilly, HarperCollins)
• The Light Between Oceans (M S Stedman, Vintage).

The longlisted titles were chosen from more than 80 entries, which, according to the award judges, represented “both the quality and diversity of Australian literary publishing”.

A shortlist will be announced on March 18, ahead of the winner announcement at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference in Wagga, New South Wales, in July.

Previous award winners include:

• 2012 Gillian Mears, Foal’s Bread (Allen & Unwin)
• 2011 Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance (Pan Macmillan)
• 2010 David Malouf, Ransom (Knopf)
• 2009 Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap (Allen & Unwin)
• 2008 Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog (Allen & Unwin)
• 2007 Alexis Wright, Carpentaria (Giramondo )
• 2006 Gregory Day, The Patron Saint of Eels (Picador)
• 2005 Gail Jones, Sixty Lights (Harvill Press)
• 2004 Laurie Duggan, Mangroves (UQP)
• 2003 Kate Jennings, Moral Hazard
• 2002 Richard Flanagan, Gould’s Book of Fish
• 2001 Rodney Hall, The Day We Had Hitler Home
• 2000 Drusilla Modjeska, Stravinsky’s Lunch
• 1999 Murray Bail, Eucalyptus
• 1998 James Cowan, A Mapmaker’s Dream
• 1997 Robert Dessaix, Night Letters
• 1996 Amanda Lohrey, Camille’s Bread
• 1995 Helen Demidenko, The Hand That Signed The Paper
• 1994 Louis Nowra, Radiance and The Temple
• 1993 Elizabeth Riddell, Selected Poems
• 1992 Rodney Hall, The Second Bridegroom
• 1991 Elizabeth Jolley, Cabin Fever
• 1990 Peter Porter, Possible Worlds
• 1989 Frank Moorhouse, Forty-seventeen
• 1988 Brian Matthews, Louisa
• 1987 Alan Wearne, The Nightmarkets
• 1986 Thea Astley, Beachmasters
• 1985 David Ireland, Archimedes and the Seagle
• 1984 Les Murray, The People’s Other World
• 1983 David Malouf, Child’s Play; Fly Away Peter
• 1975-82 No Award (ASAL takes over award in 1983)
• 1974 David Malouf, Neighbours in a Thicket
• 1973 Francis Webb
• 1972 Alexander Buzo
• 1971 Colin Badger
• 1970 Manning Clark
• 1966 A.D. Hope
• 1965 Patrick White, The Burnt Ones
• 1964 Geoffrey Blainey, The Rush That Never Ended
• 1963 John Morrison, Twenty-three stories
• 1962 Vincent Buckley, Masters in Israel
• 1960 William Hart Smith, Poems of discovery
• 1959 Randolph Stow, To the Islands
• 1957 Martin Boyd, A Difficult Young Man
• 1955 Patrick White, The Tree of Man
• 1954 Mary Gilmore, Fourteen Men
• 1952 Tom Hungerford
• 1950 Jon Cleary, Just Let Me Be
• 1948 Herz Bergner, Between Sky and Sea
• 1942 Kylie Tennant, The Battlers
• 1941 Patrick White, Happy Valley
• 1940 William Baylebridge, This Vital Flesh
• 1939 Xavier Herbert, Capricornia
• 1938 R.D. FitzGerald, Moonlight Acre
• 1937 Kenneth ‘Seaforth’ Mackenzie, The Young Desire It
• 1936 Eleanor Dark, Return to Coolami
• 1935 Winifred Birkett, Earth’s Quality
• 1934 Eleanor Dark, Prelude to Christopher
• 1933 G.B. Lancaster (Edith J. Lyttleton), Pageant
• 1932 Leonard Mann, Flesh in Armour
• 1931 Frank Dalby Davison, Manshy
• 1930 Vance Palmer, The Passage
• 1929 Henry Handel Richardson, Ultima Thule
• 1928 Martin Mills (Martin Boyd), The Montforts