Discover The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize 2025 shortlist

Previous winners of The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize include Ceridwen Dovey (2014), Stephanie Bishop (2015), Zoë Morrison (2016), Sam Carmody (2017), Jennifer Down (2018), Alice Robinson (2019), Elizabeth Tan (2020), Andrew Pippos (2021), Jessica Au (2022), Tracey Lien (2023) and Emma Darragh (2024).

The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize for 2025 is now closed. Submissions for the 2026 prize will open in September.

The judges for the 2025 prize are Thomas Busse (Doncaster), Christine Gordon (Events), Pauline Hopkins (Hawthorn), and Teddy Peak (Carlton).

Eligibility guidelines for entering a book into The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize:

• The author must be an Australian citizen or hold permanent residency at the time of entry
• The book must be the author’s first or second published work of fiction
• Eligible books must have been first published between June 2024 and May 2025. Further to this, titles published between June 2024 and November 2024 should be submitted for consideration by no later than 30 November 2024, and titles published between December 2024 and May 2025 must be submitted for consideration no later than 31 May 2025. These constraints will ensure our judges have adequate time to fairly evaluate each work.
• The book must be a full-length novel
• The work must be published or distributed in Australia by an Australian publisher or the Australian publishing wing of an international publisher as recognised by Readings
• Entries must be published in English
• Authors must be living at the date of publication
• The publisher of the work must be willing to provide 4 reading copies for each title they nominate and more on request, should the book be shortlisted

Ineligible for entry into The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize:

• Works classified or marketed as genre fiction (eg. crime, fantasy, romance), memoir, short story collections, graphic novels
• Books published only in e-book form
• Self-published or hybrid-published works
• Books published by authors who are employed by Readings during the judging period for each year
• Authors who have previously won The Readings Prize

Enquiries

If you are a publisher or an author with an eligible book you’d like to enter, please contact Angela Crocombe.