Celebrating literary excellence: SMH Best Young Australian Novelists and The Age Book of the Year Awards
June 12, 2025
Congratulations to the 2025 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists Jumaana Abdu, Winnie Dunn and Katerina Gibson, and this year’s Age Book of the Year winners, Lech Blaine and Rodney Hall. These awards are proudly supported by Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund as part of the Fund’s commitment to nurturing Australian voices and bringing Australian stories to life.
Supporting the next generation of Australian writers
Now in its 29th year, The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists award champions the most exciting emerging voices in Australian fiction and shines a light on writers aged 35 and under. This year’s winners represent a bold and diverse wave of literary talent shaping the future of Australian fiction.
The 2025 winners each receive $5,000 thanks to Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Jumaana Abdu’s Translations was shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her debut novel, Translations is a meditation on language, migration and the in-between spaces of belonging.
Winnie Dunn’s debut novel, Poor Dirt Islanders, was longlisted for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award. It’s a potent, mesmerising novel that opens our eyes to the brutal fractures navigated when growing up between two cultures.
Two-time recipient of the prize, Katerina Gibson finds herself a beneficiary in 2025 for her debut novel The Temperature – a smart, tender and sometimes deliciously vicious study of six very different people trying to find their way through broken times.
The Age Book of the Year winners
This year’s winners have been praised for writing books that stay with readers long after their final pages. Each winner receives $10,000 thanks to Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Celebrated author Rodney Hall received the 2025 Age Book of the Year award in the fiction category for his novel Vortex, which critics have described as “a late-career marvel.”
Vortex was supported by an $80,000 Author Fellowship from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund in 2020. The fellowship provided Hall with the time and resources to research, write, and craft this ambitious and evocative work.
Lech Blaine’s remarkable memoir, Australian Gospel, won the non-fiction category. The judges said Blaine is “an exceptionally gifted storyteller, alive to all the nuances of character and the circumstances that shape the lives of people”.