ACT Literary Awards 2026 winners announced
MARION has announced the winners of the 2026 ACT Literary Awards.
The winner of the overall Marion Halligan Award, selected from the category winners was The Dingo’s Noctuary (Judith Nangala Crispin, Puncher & Wattman).
The winning and highly commended titles in each category are:
Fiction
- Winner: In the Name of the Trees (Merlinda Bobis, Spinifex Press)
- Winner (self-published): To Heal a Lyrebird (Kate Liston-Mills)
Nonfiction
- Winner: Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury, Louis XIV to Donald Trump (Robert Wellington, Bloomsbury Visual Arts)
- Highly commended: Playtime: A History of Australian Childhood (Emily Gallagher, La Trobe University Press)
Poetry
- Winner: Wita Witalana (Paul Collis, Recent Work Press)
- Highly commended: Arsenic Flower (Dakota Feirer, Hachette)
Children’s literature
- Winner (fiction): The Drought Kangaroo (Jackie French, illustrated by Danny Snell, HarperCollins)
- Winner (older readers): Washpool (Lisa Fuller, Lothian Children’s Books)
- Winner (nonfiction): Peculiar Parents (Stephanie Owen Reeder, illustrated by Ingrid Bartkowiak, National Library of Australia Publishing)
Anne Edgeworth Emerging Writer’s Fellowship recipients
- Kelsey Clifton ($1,700)
- Katherine Hammersley ($3,450)
Finding Beauty Poetry Prize
- First place: “Paper Crane” by Lillace Kenta ($5,000)
- Second place: “The Italian Chapel” by Deborah Dawkings ($2,000)
- Shortlisted: “The Anatomy of My Parent’s Hands” by Michelle Brock ($750)
- Shortlisted: “She Collects Things” by Elizabeth Walton ($750)
- Honourable mentions: “On William Barton’ by Julie Hollitt and “Holding Still” by Sara Pronger
The Marion Halligan Award
- The Dingo’s Noctuary (Judith Nangala Crispin, Puncher & Wattman).
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
