Aussie award winners to look out for
Fiction
Siang Lu won the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel Ghost Cities (UQP), which judges celebrated for ‘shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura’, deeming the novel ‘a genuine landmark in Australian literature.’ Ghost Cities was also shortlisted for the Russell Prize for Humour Writing, the John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (VPLAs), the Age Book of the Year, and the Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal.
Michelle de Kretser won the $60,000 Stella Prize for her seventh novel, Theory & Practice (Text), which was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the fiction category of the VPLAs, and the BookPeople BookData Adult Fiction Book of the Year, as well as longlisted for the Nib Literary Award. Stella judges described Theory & Practice as ‘a brilliantly auto fictive knot, composed of the shifting intensities and treacheries of young love, of complex inheritances both literary and maternal, of overwhelming jealousies and dark shivers of shame’.
Meanwhile, Fiona McFarlane’s Highway 13 (A&U) won both the Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal and the $25,000 fiction award in the VPLAs, and it was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Age Book of the Year award. Organisers for the ALS Gold Medal called McFarlane’s book an ‘inventive and dazzling short story cycle that yields the cohesiveness of a novel even while preserving the integrity of its individual stories’.
Julie Janson’s Compassion (Magabala Books) won the fiction category of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Literary Awards for the fiction category and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Dusk (Robbie Arnott, Picador) won the adult fiction award at the BookPeople Book of the Year Awards and took out the fiction category at the Indie Book Awards.
Cameron Stewart’s Why Do Horses Run? (A&U) won the $10,000 2025 MUD Literary Prize – a competition for ‘the best first literary novel by an Australian writer’.
Other award-winning adult fiction included: All the Bees in the Hollows by Lauren Keegan (Affirm), which won the debut fiction category in the Indie Book Awards; Vortex (Picador) by Rodney Hall, which won the fiction prize in the Age Book of the Year awards; Heartsease by Kate Kruimink (Picador), which won the $25,000 Premier’s Prize for Fiction in the Tasmanian Literary Awards; The Angry Women’s Choir (Meg Bignell, Michael Joseph), which won the People’s Choice Award for fiction at the Tasmanian Literary Awards; The Sun Was Electric Light by Rachel Morton (UQP), which won the 2025 UQP Quentin Bryce Award; and The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill (Ultimo), which won the Mary Higgins Clark Award at the 2025 Edgar Allan Poe Awards in New York.
Meanwhile, in the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, Shadows of Winter Robins by Louise Wolhuter (Ultimo) won the Fiction Book of the Year award and Matia by Emily Tsokos Purtill (UWAP) won the Emerging Writer award.
The 2025 Romance Writers of Australia’s Romantic Book of the Year Awards saw A Most Improper Duchess (Alivia Fleur, self-published) win the historical category; Return to Hope Creek (Alyssa J Montgomery, Escape) win the long contemporary category; The Barrington Book Club (Susan Mackie, self-published) win the romantic elements category; Reckless Trust (Nyssa Kathryn, self-published) win the romantic suspense category; Bali Escape with the Single Dad (Rachel Armstrong, Escape) win the short contemporary category; Wolf’s Prize (KE Turner, Totally Entwined) win the speculative fiction category; Ocean’s Embrace (Lisa Stanbridge, Crystal Brook Publishing) win the diverse category; and Christmas at Yindi Creek (Stella Quinn, HQ) win the novella category.
Poetry
Across poetry awards, Gawimarra: Gathering by Jeanine Leane (UQP) won the VPLAs’ $25,000 award for poetry; and Pam Schindler’s say, a river (Ginninderra) won the $25,000 Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry in the Tasmanian Literary Awards, while Ways to Say Goodbye by Anne Kellas (Liquid Amber Press) won a People’s Choice Award in the poetry category.
The Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) announced Hasib Hourani as the winner of the 2025 Mary Gilmore Prize for his debut collection, rock flight (Giramondo).
In the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, Alan Fyfe’s G-d, Sleep, and Chao (Gazebo) won both the Book of the Year and Poetry Book of the Year.
Also a debut winner, Raw Salt by Izzy Roberts-Orr (Vagabond Press) won the Anne Elder Award.
The ACT Literary Awards awarded Makarra by Barrina South (Recent Work Press) the poetry category winner.
Nonfiction
The 2025 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) saw The Voice Inside by John Farnham with Poppy Stockell (Hachette) win Book of the Year and Biography Book of the Year, while the audiobook version (narrated by John Farnham, Jill Farnham and Gaynor Wheatley, produced by Squaresound) won Audiobook of the Year.
The inaugural winner of TV show Alone Australia, Gina Chick, took out the ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year (for an author’s first book, regardless of genre) for her memoir We Are the Stars (Summit Books), which was also shortlisted for the ABIA Audiobook of the Year and Biography Book of the Year, as well as in the Indie Book Awards’ nonfiction category.
Comedic memoir I’d Rather Not by Robert Skinner (Black Inc.) won the VPLAs’ $25,000 John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing and the $2000 People’s Choice Award. I’d Rather Not was also shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year, a BookPeople Book of the Year award, and the nonfiction category of the 2024 South Australian Literary Awards.
Lech Blaine won the nonfiction prize in the Age Book of the Year awards for Australian Gospel: A Family Saga (Black Inc.), which was also longlisted for the $40,000 Nib Literary Award.
The Season by Helen Garner (Text) won the nonfiction award at the BookPeople Book of the Year Awards and was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards in the nonfiction category.
In further nonfiction wins, Bullet, Paper, Rock: A Memoir of Words and Wars by Abbas El-Zein (Upswell) won the $25,000 National Biography Award; Black Witness by Amy McQuire (UQP) won the Indigenous writing prize in the VPLAs and was longlisted in the $40,000 Nib Literary Award; and also within the VPLAs, Anything Can Happen (Susan Hampton, Puncher & Wattmann) won the nonfiction prize.
This year’s Indie Book Awards also celebrated The Book Thief author Markus Zusak, who won the nonfiction category with Three Wild Dogs and the Truth (Picador); while The Paintings of Criss Canning by Criss Canning (Thames & Hudson) won in the illustrated nonfiction category.
In the ACT Literary Awards, An Unexpected Life (Vesna Cvjetićanin, self-published) and Warra Warra Wai (Darren Rix and Craig Cormick, Scribe) were joint winners in the nonfiction category.
Anatomy of a Secret by Gerard McCann (Fremantle) won the $15,000 Nonfiction Book of the Year prize in the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards for 2025.
In the Tasmanian Literary Awards, Graft by Maggie MacKellar (Penguin) won the $25,000 Premier’s Prize for Nonfiction and the People’s Choice Award in the nonfiction category.
Children’s nonfiction
Amazing Animal Journeys by Jennifer Cossins (Lothian) won the Tasmanian Literary Awards’ People’s Choice Award in the Books for Young Readers and Children category. Cossins’ picture book about the animal kingdom was also shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Eve Pownall Award.
Always Was, Always Will Be by Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson (Magabala Books) won the CBCA Eve Pownall Award for information books.
Children’s fiction
Three Dresses by Wanda Gibson (UQP) won both the overall $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature and the children’s literature prize at the 2025 VPLAs. The award organisers said of the author, ‘A master weaver, painter and artist, Gibson’s own illustrations imbue the heart-warming family story with a visual celebration of country and home.’
Big, Big Love, written by Lisa Fuller and illustrated by Samantha Campbell (Magabala Books), won the ACT Literary Awards’ children’s literature category. For middle-grade readers, the ACT Literary Awards presented Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger (Jackie French, HarperCollins) as the winner.
In the Tasmanian Literary Awards, Digger Digs Down (Johanna Bell, illus by Huni Melissa Bolliger, UQP) won the $25,000 Minister for the Arts’ Prize for Books for Young Readers and Children.
Laughter Is the Best Ending (Maryam Master, illus by Astred Hicks, Pan) won the 2025 CBCA Book of the Year in the younger readers category and The Wobbly Bike (Darren McCallum, illus by Craig Smith, Walker) won the Book of the Year in the early childhood category.
The ABIAs Book of the Year for Younger Children (ages 7–12) went to the debut Wurrtoo, written by Tylissa Elisara and illustrated by Dylan Finney (Lothian), which also won the 2024 Readings Prize children’s category. Wurrtoo was also a black&write! Fellowship winner as a manuscript.
The ABIA Children’s Picture Book of the Year (ages 0–6) went to The Truck Cat, written by Deborah Frenkel and illustrated by Danny Snell (Bright Light), which also won the 2025 CBCA Picture Book of the Year and the NSW Literary Awards’ Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature. This title was also selected by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) for the 2025 National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) event, where participants across Australia read and celebrated the book.
All the Beautiful Things by Katrina Nannestad (ABC Books) won in the children’s category of the Indie Book Awards.
The Midwatch by Judith Rossell (HGCP) won the children’s award at the BookPeople Book of the Year Awards and was shortlisted in both the Indie Book Awards and the ARA Historical Novel Prize.
A Leaf Called Greaf by Kelly Canby (Fremantle) won the Western Australia Premier’s Book Awards’ Children’s Book of the Year Award.
Sarah Capon won the CBCA Award for a New Illustrator for Grow Big, Little Seed, written by Bec Nanayakkara (Bright Light).
YA
My Family and Other Suspects by Kate Emery (A&U Children’s) won the 2025 ABIA John Marsden Book of the Year for Older Children, the young adult fiction award in the Indie Book Awards, and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards’ Young Adult Book of the Year. The title was also a Children’s Book of the Year in the CBCA’s list of Notable Books.
Anomaly by Emma Lord (Affirm) won the writing for young adults category at the VPLAs.
I’m Not Really Here (Gary Lonesborough, A&U Children’s) won the 2025 CBCA Book of the Year in the older readers category.
The Unexpected Mess of It All by Gabrielle Tozer (HarperCollins) won the YA category of the ACT Literary Awards.
Category: Think Australian awards
