The Readings Prize has been celebrating outstanding new Australian writing since The New Australian Fiction Prize was first awarded in 2014. We’re incredibly proud of the impact we’ve had as champions of emerging authors in that time. In 2026, we will be making some changes to how the prize operates, but we’ll still be focused on supporting debut and emerging authors and offering rich, varied reads to our community. See more about the changes here.
The 2026 shortlist for The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize will be announced in September and the winner in October. The winning author will be also be featured in the lineup for A Day in Carlton in November.
Enquiries
Eligible books stocked by Readings will automatically be considered for The New Australian Fiction Prize, but if you would like more information on the process or eligibility criteria, please contact the prize manager, Angela Crocombe.
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
- 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
- Authors who have previously won The Readings Prize
Previous winners of The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize: 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), Emma Darragh (2024) and Dominic Amerena (2025).
