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ARA Historical Novel Prize 2025 longlists announced

Wednesday, 3 September 2025   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

The Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA) has announced the longlists for the 2025 ARA Historical Novel Prize.

Longlisted titles are:

Adult category 

  • All the Bees in the Hollows (Lauren Keegan, Affirm)
  • Dusk (Robbie Arnott, Picador)
  • Everything Lost, Everything Found (Matthew Hooton, Fourth Estate)
  • The First Friend (Malcolm Knox, A&U)
  • I Am Nannertgarrook (Tasma Walton, Bundyi)
  • The Lotus Shoes (Jane Yang, Sphere)
  • One Hundred Years of Betty (Debra Oswald, A&U)
  • Rapture (Emily Maguire, A&U)
  • When Sleeping Women Wake (Emma Pei Yin, Hachette)

Children and young adult category 

  • Desert Tracks (Marly & Linda Wells, Magabala Books)
  • Hester Hitchins and the Falling Stars (Catherine Norton, HarperCollins)
  • The Midwatch (Judith Rossell, HGCP)
  • Moonboy (Anna Ciddor, A&U Children’s)
  • On Gallant Wings (Helen Edwards, Riveted)
  • Our History: Bold Ben Hall (Sophie Masson, Walker Books)
  • RIP Nanny Tobbins (Lucie Stevens, HarperCollins)
  • The Year We Escaped (Suzanne Leal, HarperCollins).

This year, organisers are also running a Readers’ Choice Award in the adult category, with a further $5000 prize. 

HNSA chair Elisabeth Storrs said, ‘This year’s longlists showcase the power of the historical fiction genre to reclaim lost narratives and re-imagine history with various themes including gender stereotypes, early feminism, heroism, ancestral connections and folklore. The stories span centuries and cultures from medieval Europe to the moon landing with stops along the way in 16th-century Lithuania and 1800s China, through to Victorian England, colonial Australia, 20th-century America and Central Australia, World War II France, Hong Kong, and Stalin’s Russia.’

The adult category winner will receive $100,000, and the children and young adult category winner will receive $30,000, while other shortlisted authors will receive $5000 each.

The shortlist is planned to be released at the end of September, with the winner set to be announced on 16 October.

The ARA Historical Novel Prize was established in 2020 and is open to historical fiction books from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Last year’s winners were Melissa Lucashenko (adult category, for Edenglassie, UQP) and Beverley McWilliams (children and young adult category, for Spies in the Sky, illus by Martina Heiduczek, Pantera).

More information about the prize is available on the HNSA website.

 

Category: Awards Local news