The Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature were established in 1986 and are an initiative of the Government of South Australia, managed through Arts SA. They are granted biennially to the judged-best authors in Australian children’s literature, fiction, innovation, non-fiction and poetry. The awards, which judge the best works published in Australia in the previous two years, are the nation’s most competitive literary awards (761 entries submitted for 2010). There is a total prize pool of $160,000, and these awards honour the best in Australian literature.