Australian literature: Awards

How do you find Australian literature awards?

Type your keywords [the award in question and the word 'winner'] in the search bar
- Example: A search for 'Miles Franklin Award winner' returns search results including All the birds, singing by Evie Wyld. The catalogue record for this item notes it won the Award in 2024 in the 'Awards' field.

Selected works

Australian literary awards & fellowships: with winners of Australian & overseas awards (1991-2006)
The PETA guide to the Children's Book Council awards shortlist (2002-2008)

New authors and their publishers may be interested in several literary awards around Australia.

Finding Australian literature Fairfax group

Fairfax Corporation, Group of men and women gathered around a trolley full of books at the Municipal Library, New South Wales, 20 June 1930, nla.obj-160503553

Where to find information in our online databases

AustLit: the resource for Australian literature is a key resource for information about Australian writers and writing. The latest awards news is given on the AustLit home page, and author information includes a list of awards given.

Who's Who in Australia. Here you can search for people, Australian Awards, such as the Miles Franklin Award or Premier's Awards, and occupations such as writer, author or novellist. Search results may include contact details for authors or their agents.

You can find AustLit and Who's Who in Australia by visiting our eResources portal and searching for the databases under the Browse eResources tab.

If you are a registered member of the National Library, you can access both databases from home.

Case study: The Nobel Prize

Is The Solid Mandala Patrick White's Nobel Prize Book?

We can look into the awards won by Patrick White, both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the other literature awards, using AustLit and internet searches.
Patrick White won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. This award isn't given for an individual book, but rather for an entire body of work created over a number of years. Information about the Nobel prize won by Patrick White can be found on the official Nobel Prize website. The site notes that the Nobel Prize was awarded to White 'for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature'.
Other awards listed in AustLit for Patrick White include:
- The Miles Franklin Literary Award: 1957 for Voss and 1961 for Riders in the Chariot. A list of past winners can be seen at the Miles Franklin Literary Award website.
- Australian of the Year in 1973.
According to Patrick White: letters by David Marr, The Solid Mandala was first published in 1966. It was short-listed for the 1967 Miles Franklin Literary award, until White personally intervened and withdrew it from consideration so that other writers might stand a chance of winning.

Online lists

Websites which include information about Australian literary awards, and provide lists of winners:

These and other awards can be seen at Wikipedia list of Australian literary awards.

black and white photo of a woman looking at the camera

Parker Studios, Miles Franklin, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-229628701

Featured resource

MS 681 Papers of Miles Franklin 1887-[ca. 1931] Item: Miles Franklin nla.obj-229628701

The Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's first literary award, was established in 1954 with a bequest from the author Miles Franklin.

Access to Library materials

If you are a registered reader, you can request items to read and photocopy in the reading rooms of the National Library of Australia.

Registered readers can also search selected subscription databases.

If you can't visit the Library, you can use our Copies Direct service to request copies and have them sent to you via mail or email. Please note there may be copyright restrictions when using this service.

You can also search Trove to find a library closer to you which has the item in their collection.

If there is no library near you with the item, you may be able to arrange an interlibrary loan through your local public or institutional library Please ask staff at your local library for assistance with this.

In this guide

Two men, one on a ladder, looking at books on large bookshelf at the State Library of Victoria

Mark Strizic, Searching for books at the State Library of Victoria, January 1967, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-140508667

Australian literature research guide

A guide to finding Australian literature resources

Research guide

Finding australian literature The Burning

Williamson, Geordie, The burning library : our great novelists lost and found. Melbourne : Text Publishing, 2012

Australian literature: Book reviews

Book reviews appear in newspapers and scholarly journals. To locate these you can use a title search of a particular periodical, such as Australian Book Review.

Research guide