The Readings Prize 2025 Shortlists:

The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize shortlist

The Readings Young Adult Prize shortlist

The Readings Children’s Prize shortlist

First presented in 2014, The Readings Prize continues to support new and outstanding Australian voices across three separate categories of fiction: Children’s, Young Adult and New Australian Fiction. The Readings Prize is unique in the Australian literary landscape being the only prize currently run by an independent Melbourne bookshop and supporting emerging local voices.

Each year, three prizes are awarded to reflect our judgement of the works that have attained the highest literary merit in their category (and they’re always great reads too!). We look for books that can contribute richness and variety to Australian readers. The Readings Prize offers $16,000 in prize money, which is distributed evenly to the winners of each category ($5,000 per category winner), plus $1,000 to the winner of The Gab Williams Prize.

The Readings Prize is now closed for 2025. The winners will be announced on November 14 at our A Day in Carlton festival. All are welcome and you can RSVP here.

We are recalibrating the prize for 2026 and are not currently accepting submissions. We'll update on this page when the 2026 prize opens.