The shortlists for the 2025 Age Book of the Year awards have been announced! The Age Book of the Year Awards celebrate outstanding Australian works of fiction and nonfiction. The winners will be announced by Age editor Patrick Elligett during the Melbourne Writers Festival opening gala on 8 May, with each category winner to receive $10,000.
Judges for this year’s awards are the Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s Canberra bureau chief Michelle Griffin and author and critic Bram Presser (fiction), as well as author, reviewer and Caritas Australia mission director Michael McGirr and author and director Lorin Clarke (nonfiction).
The 2025 Fiction Book of the Year shortlist:
The Burrow by Melanie Cheng
This Kingdom of Dust by David Dyer
Vortex by Rodney Hall
Depth of Field by Kirsty Iltners
Ghost Cities by Siang Lu
Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane
The 2025 Nonfiction Book of the Year shortlist:
A Season of Death by Mark Raphael Baker
Australian Gospel: A Family Saga by Lech Blaine
Crimes of the Cross by Anne Manne
Model Minority Gone Rogue by Qin Qin
Cactus Pear for My Beloved by Samah Sabawi
Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy by Clare Wright
You can also revisit the 2024 winners: Tony Birch won the fiction award for his novel Women & Children and Ross McMullin won the nonfiction prize for Life So Full of Promise: Further Biographies of Australia’s Lost Generations.
