The winners of the 2025 Prime Minister's Literary Awards have been announced! This is Australia's richest literary prize, with each winner in the six categories receiving $80,000 in prize money, and the shortlisted authors also receiving $5,000 each.
Wenona Byrne, the Director of Writing Australia said:
'The 2025 winners reflect the richness and diversity of Australian storytelling. Each of these works brings a unique perspective, whether it is giving voice to critical moments in our history, sparking imagination in young readers, or offering new ways to think about the world around us.'
Discover the the 2025 winners!
Fiction winner
Theory & Practice
Michelle de Kretser
It's 1986, and 'beautiful, radical ideas' are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students-and Kit. He claims to be in a 'deconstructed' relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray.
Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia's most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.
Non-fiction winner
Mean Streak
Rick Morton
Robodebt was the automated debt recovery system, in which close to half a million Australian welfare recipients were illegally pursued over false debts. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality, incompetence and cowardice'. Essentially, Australia was gaslit by its own government. They backed something that was illegal, shook down innocent people for money, then lied about it for four and a half years.
In the tradition of Chloe Hooper and Helen Garner, Rick Morton tells a powerful and emotionally compelling story of one of the most shocking, large-scale failures of the Australian government, a historic and appalling political tragedy, which clearly displayed the wide-reaching and systematic contempt that a government had for its most vulnerable citizens.
Australian history winner
Critical Care
Geraldine Fela
HIV and AIDS devastated communities across Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. In the midst of this profound health crisis, nurses provided crucial care to those living with and dying from the virus. They negotiated homophobia and complex family dynamics as well as defending the rights of their patients.
Bringing together stories from across the country, historian Geraldine Fela documents the extraordinary care, compassion and solidarity shown by HIV and AIDS nurses. Critical Care unearths the important and unexamined history of nurses and nursing unions as caregivers and political agents who helped shape Australia's response to HIV and AIDS.
Poetry winner
The Other Side of Daylight
David Brooks
A bottle of Romanee-Conti sells for $785,000, while bodies are dug by hand from earthquake rubble in Indonesia because the local government couldn't afford the earthmoving equipment to do so while people were still alive. Elephants are shot and skinned by poachers and remote Indigenous communities are shut down for want of infrastructural funding. And with tenderness and humility, a simple gift of peanuts to magpies, sheep and a tentative rat reframes the place of the human in the world.
David Brooks's longstanding concerns for justice and the relationship between human and non-human animals infuse and enliven his work. Wise, lyrical and timely, The Other Side of Daylight distils a long and honoured poetry career with a marvellous selection from his five previous volumes and The Peanut Vendor, a collection of forty-eight luminous new poems.
Young adult literature winner
The Invocations
Krystal Sutherland
Zara Jones won't accept her murdered sister is gone forever and will do whatever it takes to claw her sister back from the grave – even trading in the occult. Jude Wolf may be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. Jude's desperate to find someone to undo the damage she's done to herself. Enter Emer Byrne, an orphaned witch with a dark past and a deadly power, a.k.a. the solution to both Zara's and Jude's problems.
Though Emer lives a hardscrabble life, she gives away her most valuable asset – her invocations – to women in desperate situations who are willing to sacrifice a piece of their soul in exchange for a scrap of power. Zara and Jude are willing, but they first have to find Emer.
Children's literature winner
Leo and Ralph
Peter Carnavas
Leo and Ralph have been best friends ever since Ralph flew down from one of Jupiter's moons. But now Leo's in Grade Four and he's spending too much time in his own imagination. Mum and Dad say it's time to say goodbye. The family are moving to a small country town and they hope Leo might finally find a real friend. But someone like Ralph is very hard to leave behind...
Perfect for kids who enjoy gentle, thoughtful stories like The Wild Robot by Peter Brown and the Polly and Buster series by Sally Rippin.
Find out more about the Prime Minister's Literary Awards here.
