Tasmanian Literary Awards 2025 shortlists announced

The shortlists for the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards have been announced.

Shortlisted titles in each category are:

Premier’s Prize for Fiction ($25,000)

• The Angry Women’s Choir (Meg Bignell, Penguin)
• Heartsease (Kate Kruimink, Picador)
• Limberlost (Robbie Arnott, Text)

Premier’s Prize for Nonfiction ($25,000)

• Convict Orphans (Lucy Frost, A&U)
• Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths (Matthew Lamb, Knopf)
• Graft (Maggie MacKellar, Penguin)
• Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here (Heather Rose, A&U)

Minister for the Arts’ Prize for Books for Young Readers and Children ($25,000)

• Amazing Animal Journeys (Jennifer Cossins, Lothian)
• Digger Digs Down (Johanna Bell, illus by Huni Melissa Bolliger, UQP)
• Feathered Alphabet (Monica Reeve, Forty South)

Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry ($25,000)

• AfterLife (Kathryn Lomer, Puncher & Wattmann)
• Say, a River (Pam Schindler, Ginninderra)
• Slack Tide (Sarah Day, Pitt Street Poetry)
• Ways to Say Goodbye (Anne Kellas, Liquid Amber Press).

The shortlisted titles and writers for the manuscript and fellowship prizes are:

University of Tasmania Prize ($10,000)

• ‘Deceptions’ by Stella Kent
• ‘Department of the Vanishing’ by Johanna Bell
• ‘Fire Lights’ by Gemma Gilmore
• ‘The 7 Elaborate Defences of Frederick Irvine’ by Blake Nuto

Aboriginal Writer’s Fellowship ($10,000; publishing opportunity in Island magazine)

• Adam Thompson
• Brooke Robinson
• Jillian Mundy
• Nunami Sculthorpe‑Green

Margaret Scott Tasmanian Young Writer’s Fellowship ($5000; publishing opportunity in Island magazine)

• Abby Wallace
• Lars Rogers
• Roly Dalton
• Zoe Hyland.

Category: Local news