ACT Literary Awards 2026 shortlists announced
MARION has announced the shortlists for the 2026 ACT Literary Awards.
The shortlisted titles are:
Children’s literature
- Creature Corridors (Billie Rooney, illustrated by Anke Noack, CSIRO Publishing)
- The Drought Kangaroo (Jackie French, illustrated by Danny Snell, HarperCollins)
- Luna’s World – Library Dreams (Hayley Gannon, illustrated by Michelle Conn, Affirm Kids)
- Peculiar Parents (Stephanie Owen Reeder, illustrated by Ingrid Bartkowiak, NLA Publishing)
- Poppy’s Monster (Shelly Higgs, illustrated by Francesca Costa, Starfish Bay Publishing)
- Washpool (Lisa Fuller, Lothian Children’s Books).
Fiction
- In the Name of the Trees (Merlinda Bobis, Spinifex Press)
- Legacy (Chris Hammer, Allen & Unwin)
- To Heal a Lyrebird (Kate Liston-Mills, self-published)
- When Sleeping Women Wake (Emma Pei Yin, Hachette).
Nonfiction
- The Man Who Planted Canberra: Charles Weston & His Three Million Trees (Robert Macklin with John Gray, NLA Publishing)
- Playtime: A History of Australian Childhood (Emily Gallagher, La Trobe University Press)
- Politics, Pride and Perversion: The Rise and Fall of Frank Arkell (Erik Eklund, ANU Press)
- Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury, Louis XIV to Donald Trump (Robert Wellington, Bloomsbury Visual Arts).
Poetry
- Arsenic Flower (Dakota Feirer, Hachette)
- The Dingo’s Noctuary (Judith Nangala Crispin, Puncher & Wattmann)
- Fruits of Exile (Maggie Shapley, Recent Work Press)
- Wita Witalana (Paul Collis, Recent Work Press).
The winners will be announced at the 2026 ACT Literary Awards ceremony at Verity Lane ACT on 2 July. In addition to the category awards, one of the shortlisted works will be selected to receive the Marion Halligan Award, which will also be announced on the night.
The 2026 judges are Ambelin Kwaymullina and Gabrielle Tozer for children’s, Eugen Bacon and Lucy Neave for fiction, Frank Bongiorno and Helen Ennis for nonfiction, and Dan Hogan and Jen Webb for poetry.
Held annually, the awards recognise the achievements of writers from the ACT and surrounding regions.
More information about the awards is available on the MARION website.
Category: Awards Local news
