Max Dupain biography wins 2026 National Biography Award
Helen Ennis has won the $25,000 National Biography Award for Max Dupain: A Portrait (4th Estate).
The biography explores “the complexities and contradictions of the man who produced Australia’s most well-known image, the Sunbaker, and examines the sources of his creativity,” according to State Library of NSW.
The winning title was chosen as “an exceptional example of the biographer’s craft,” said chair of judges Sylvia Martin. “Elegantly structured and written, it weaves Max Dupain’s life and work into a complex whole. Interspersed microchapters accompanying carefully curated images illuminate not only the range and originality of his photography but also aspects of his character. This biography of a major 20th-century Australian photographer will be read long into the 21st century.”
Micaela Sahhar has won the $5,000 Michael Crouch Award for a Debut Work for Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family (NewSouth Publishing). Judges praised the memoir’s “exceptional synthesis of scholarship, imagination and literary craft, and profound contribution to contemporary life writing”.
The authors of the shortlisted works each receive $2,000.
State Library of NSW state librarian Caroline Butler-Bowdon said: “Memoir and biography writers deepen our understanding of history, the human experience and the world around us, while helping us better understand ourselves. We are grateful to the State Library of NSW Foundation for making this award possible.”
The National Biography Award is an annual award established in 1996 to encourage “the highest standards of biography and autobiography writing and to promote public interest in these genres”.
State Library of NSW is opening a retrospective exhibition of Max Dupain’s work, Definitive Dupain, on 24 August. A companion book to the exhibition, Definitive Dupain (Thames & Hudson, September), includes an essay by Helen Ennis.
Category: Awards Local news
