Award-winning Aussie authors

Since the previous edition of Think Australian, Australian authors have been making shortlists, longlists and winning awards – both in Australia and overseas – with fiction, poetry and nonfiction for adult audiences and younger readers. Here, Books+Publishing highlights some of these internationally and nationally renowned authors.

Repeat winners 

Rick Morton’s Mean Streak (Fourth Estate), an account of the Australian robodebt scandal, won this year’s Walkley Book Award. The book also won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award (PMLAs) for Nonfiction and the Nib People’s Choice Prize, and was shortlisted in the Australian Book Industry Awards Social Impact Book of the Year category and the Australian Political Book of the Year Award.

Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser (Text) won the fiction award in the 2025 PMLAs. The novel also won the 2025 Stella Prize and was shortlisted for both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (VPLAs) fiction category.

Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions by Clare Wright (Text) won the Queensland Literary Awards (QLAs) nonfiction category, the Australian Political Book of the Year award and the Northern Territory History Award, and was shortlisted for the PMLAs, VPLAs, the Age Book of the Year Award, NSW History Awards, Walkley Book Award and more.

Amy McQuire won the Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance for Black Witness (UQP). The book also won the Indigenous writing prize in the VPLAs, the Danger Awards crime nonfiction category and was longlisted in the Nib Literary Award. The publisher called Black Witness “a searing indictment of the media’s failures in reporting Indigenous affairs”, and QLA judges highlighted its “outstanding scholarly rigour and moral clarity”. Judges said, “Grounded in meticulous evidence, it offers a powerful indictment of systemic injustice and underscores the need for truth-telling. This is a vital contribution to Indigenous scholarship and the national reckoning we so urgently need.”

Fiction 

Omar Musa’s Fierceland (Penguin) won the VPLA’s nonfiction prize.

Tasma Walton’s I Am Nannertgarrook (Bundyi) and Robbie Arnott’s Dusk (Picador) shared the ARA Historical Novel Prize in the adult category.

Emily Maguire’s Rapture (A&U) won the Fiction Book Award in the QLAs, while Laura Elvery’s Nightingale (UQP) won the People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award.

Dominic Amerna’s I Want Everything (Summit) won the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize.

In the Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing, Margaret Hickey’s The Creeper (Penguin) won the best crime fiction category and Lisa Kenway’s All You Took from Me (Transit Lounge) won the debut crime fiction category.

Poetry

In the PMLAs, The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems by David Brooks (UQP) won the poetry category. A collection in which “Brook’s concerns for justice and the relationship between human and non-human animals infuse and enliven his work”, said the publisher.

The QLAs Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection went to The Oblong Plot by Chris Andrews (Puncher & Wattmann).

Evelyn Araluen won the Victorian Prize for Literature for The Rot (UQP), along with the VPLA’s prize for Indigenous writing.

Nonfiction

Historian and essayist Martin Thomas’s Clever Men (A&U) was awarded the 2025 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.

Steve Johnson’s A Thousand Miles from Care (HarperCollins) won the true crime writing category in the Ned Kelley Awards.

Micaela Sahhar’s Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family (NewSouth) won the VPLA’s nonfiction prize.

In the PMLAs, Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia’s AIDS Crisis by Geraldine Fela (UNSW Press) won the Australian history category.

In the US, Australian historian Lyndal Roper won the Cundill History Prize for Summer of Fire and Blood (John Murray).

Children’s fiction

The winner of the QLAs Children’s Book Award was the verse novel Little Bones by Sandy Bigna (UQP).

How to Free a Jinn (Raidah Shah Idil, A&U Children’s) won the 2025 Readings Children’s Prize.

Darren Rix and Craig Cormick’s Warra Warra Wai (Scribner) won the ACT Book of the Year award.

Suzanne Leal won the ARA Historical Novel Prize in the children and young adult category for The Year We Escaped (HarperCollins).

Leo and Ralph (Peter Carnavas, UQP) won the children’s category of the PMLAs.

Young adult fiction 

In the Readings Prize, This Dream Will Devour Us (Emma Clancey, A&U Children’s) won the Gab Williams Prize and Aisle Nine (Ian X Cho, HarperCollins) won the Young Adult Prize.

The young adult category of the PMLAs saw The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland (Penguin) win the young adult category.

Don’t Let the Forest In (CG Drews, Hodder Children’s) won the Young Adult Book Award within the QLAs.

In the VPLAs, the John Marsden Prize for Writing for Young Adults went to This Stays Between Us (Margot McGovern, Penguin).

Category: Think Australian awards