Book awards & prizes
The best of the best, local, state, national and international awards, these are the books and films to get your hands on.
Literature
South Australia
Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature – presented every two years during Adelaide Writers' Week, as part of the Adelaide Festival managed by the State Library of SA. Awards are offered across both national and South Australian categories and is one of Australia's richest and most prestigious literary awards.
Australia
The Prime Minister's Literary Award – administered by the Minister for the Arts; celebrates the contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life. There are five categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, young adult and children's fiction.
Miles Franklin Award – Australia's most prestigious literature prize, awarded each year to a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases
The Australian/Vogel Literary Award – prize for an unpublished manuscript written by a writer under the age of 35.
Aurealis Award – an annual literary award for Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction.
The Stella Prize – an Australian annual literary award for writing by Australian women in all genres.
Ned Kelly Awards – presented by the Australian Crime Writers Association, the awards are Australia's oldest and most prestigious prize for crime fiction and true crime writing.
ALS Gold Medal – awarded by the Australian Literature Society (ALS) annually, for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year.
Patrick White Award – established by Patrick White, an annual literary prize given to a writer who has been highly creative over a long period, but has not necessarily received adequate recognition.
Booksellers' Choice Book of the Year Award – Australian Booksellers Association recognises the books that booksellers most enjoyed reading and handselling during the previous year.
Davitt Award – presented by Sisters in Crime Australia annually for Australian crime fiction, by women, for both adults and young adults.
Walkley Book Award – celebrates Australian writers who take enduring subjects from news, eyewitness accounts, investigations and history.
National Biography Award – celebrates excellence in biography, autobiography and memoir writing.
Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction – awarded for literary merit in new Australian authors.
International
Nobel Prize for Literature – a Swedish literature prize, awarded annually to an author from any country, who has produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction, based on an author's body of work as a whole.
The Booker Prize for Fiction – a highly anticipated and prestigious annual award, for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK or Ireland.
Women's Prize for Fiction – awarded annually to a female author of any nationality, for the best original novel written in English and published in the UK the previous year.
Hugo Award – annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy work and achievements of the previous year, presented by the World Science Fiction Society.
The Daggers – presented by the UK Crime Writers Association.
International Dublin Literary Award – presented annually for a novel written or translated into English, sponsored by Dublin City Council and administered by Dublin City Libraries.
World Fantasy Awards – a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year.
The Barry Awards and the Anthony Awards – two awards presented at the World Mystery Convention. The Barry Award is a crime literary prize awards annually by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, an American quarterly publication for crime fiction readers. The Anthony Awards are literary awards for mystery writers and are named for Anthony Boucher, one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America.
The Ignyte Awards – a new award highlighting diversity and inclusivity in speculative fiction.
Award winners