Loading AI tools
This is a list of historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2020.
Literary fiction
- Patrick Allington – Rise & Shine[1]
- Robbie Arnott – The Rain Heron
- James Bradley – Ghost Species[2]
- Trent Dalton – All Our Shimmering Skies[3]
- Jon Doust – Return Ticket[4]
- Chris Flynn – Mammoth[5]
- Anna Goldsworthy – Melting Moments[6]
- Kate Grenville – A Room Made of Leaves[7]
- Gail Jones – Our Shadows[8]
- Tom Keneally – The Dickens Boy[9]
- Sofie Laguna – Infinite Splendours[10]
- Bem Le Hunte – Elephants with Headlights[11]
- Carol Lefevre – Murmurations[12]
- Amanda Lohrey – The Labyrinth
- Laura Jean McKay – The Animals in That Country
- Andrew Pippos – Lucky's[13]
- Mirandi Riwoe – Stone Sky Gold Mountain[14]
- Ronnie Scott – The Adversary[15]
- Craig Silvey – Honeybee[16]
- Philip Salom – The Fifth Season[17]
- Nardi Simpson – Song of the Crocodile[18]
- Madeleine Watts – The Inland Sea[19]
- Gina Wilkinson – When the Apricots Bloom
- Pip Williams – The Dictionary of Lost Words
- Daniel Davis Wood – At the Edge of the Solid World[20]
- Evie Wyld – The Bass Rock
Children's and young adult fiction
- Davina Bell – The End of the World is Bigger than Love[21]
- Alex Dyson – When It Drops[22]
- Zana Fraillon – The Lost Soul Atlas[23]
- Jane Godwin – When Rain Turns to Snow[24]
- Kate Gordon – Aster's Good, Right Things[25]
- Libby Hathorn and Lisa Hathorn-Jarman – No! Never![26]
- Will Kostakis
- Anna McGregor – Anemone Is Not The Enemy
- Cath Moore – Metal Fish, Falling Snow[29]
- Jaclyn Moriarty – The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst[30]
- Sally Murphy – Worse Things[31]
- Katrina Nannestad – We Are Wolves[32]
- Garth Nix – The Left-Handed Booksellers of London[33]
- Kirli Saunders – Bindi[34]
- Shaun Tan – Dog[35]
- Jessica Townsend – Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow
Crime
- Anne Buist – The Long Shadow[36]
- Garry Disher – Consolation
- Candice Fox – Gathering Dark[37]
- Sulari Gentill – A Testament of Character[38]
- Jane Harper – The Survivors[39]
- Sally Hepworth – The Good Sister[40]
- Dervla McTiernan – The Good Turn[41]
- J. P. Pomare – Tell Me Lies[42]
- Michael Robotham – When She Was Good[43]
- Sarah Thornton – White Throat[44]
- David Whish-Wilson – True West[45]
Science Fiction and Fantasy
- Max Barry – Providence
- Trudi Canavan – Maker's Curse[46]
- Greg Egan – Instantiation
- Gillian Polack – Poison & Light[47]
- Paul Voermans – The White Library[48]
Poetry
- Laurie Duggan – Homer Street
- Michael Farrell – Family Trees
- Kate Llewellyn – Harbour
- Felicity Plunkett – A Kinder Sea
- Ellen van Neerven
- Homeland Calling: Words from a new generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices (as editor)
- Throat
Non-fiction
- Julia Baird – Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
- Richard Fidler – The Golden Maze: A History of Prague
- Michael Gawenda – The Powerbroker: Mark Leibler, an Australian Life
- Eddie Jaku – The Happiest Man on Earth
- John Kinsella – Displaced: A Rural Life
- Grace Karskens – People of the River: Lost worlds of early Australia
- Michael Gawenda – The Powerbroker: Mark Leibler, an Australian
- Sophie McNeill – We Can't Say We Didn't Know: Dispatches from an age of impunity
- Brenda Niall – Friends and Rivals: Four Great Australian Writers: Barbara Baynton, Ethel Turner, Nettie Palmer, Henry Handel Richardson
- Caroline Overington – Missing William Tyrrell
- Christopher Pyne – The Insider: The scoops, the scandals and the serious business within the Canberra bubble
- Cassandra Pybus – Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse
- Miranda Tapsell – Top End Girl
- Robert Tickner – Ten Doors Down: The Story of an Extraordinary Adoption Reunion
- Malcolm Turnbull – A Bigger Picture
Note: these awards were presented in the year in question.
Lifetime achievement
| Award | Author |
|---|---|
| Patrick White Award[49] | Gregory Day |
Literary
| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALS Gold Medal[50] | Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu | Cordite Press |
| Colin Roderick Award[51] | Sally Young | Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires | NewSouth Publishing |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year[52] | Favel Parrett | There Was Still Love | Hachette |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards[53] | Tara June Winch | The Yield | Penguin Random House |
| Stella Prize[54] | Jess Hill | See What You Made Me Do | Black Inc |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards[55][56] | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking | Belvoir and Co-Curious |
Fiction
National
Children and Young Adult
National
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Children's Book of the Year Award[65] | Older Readers | Vikki Wakefield | This Is How We Change the Ending | Text Publishing |
| Younger Readers | Pip Harry | The Little Wave | University of Queensland Press | |
| Picture Book | Chris McKimmie | I Need a Parrot | Ford Street | |
| Early Childhood | Frances Watts | My Friend Fred | Allen & Unwin | |
| Eve Pownall Award for Information Books | Bruce Pascoe | Young Dark Emu: A truer history | Magabala Books | |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year[52] | Children's | Sami Bayly | The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals | Lothian |
| Young Adult | Wal Chim | The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling | Allen & Unwin | |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards[63] | Children's | Lian Tanner & Jonathan Bentley | Ella and the Ocean | Allen & Unwin |
| Young People's | Karen Foxlee | Lenny's Book of Everything | Allen & Unwin | |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards[55][56] | Young Adult Fiction | Helena Fox | How It Feels to Float | Pan Macmillan Australia |
Crime and Mystery
International
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barry Award[66] | Novel | Jane Harper | The Lost Man | Pan Macmillan |
National
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Davitt Award[67] | Novel | Meg Mundell | The Trespassers | University of Queensland Press |
| Young adult novel | Astrid Scholte | Four Dead Queens | Allen & Unwin | |
| Children's novel | Jenny Blackford | The Girl in the Mirror | Eagle Books | |
| True crime | Adele Ferguson | Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate cover-ups. One Journalist's Fight for the Truth | HarperCollins | |
| Debut novel | Susan Hurley | Eight Lives | Affirm Press | |
| Readers' choice | Dervla McTiernan | The Scholar | HarperCollins | |
| Emma Viskic | Darkness for Light | Echo Publishing | ||
| Ned Kelly Award[68] | Novel | Christian White | The Wife and the Widow | Affirm Press |
| First novel | Natalie Conyer | Present Tense | Clan Destine Press | |
| True crime | Dan Box | Bowraville | Viking Books | |
Science fiction
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ditmar Award[69] | Novel | Gillian Polack | The Year of the Fruit Cake | IFWG Publishing |
| Best Short Fiction | Rivqa Rafael | "Whom My Soul Loves" | ||
Poetry
| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature[57] | Natalie Harkin | Archival-Poetics | Vagabond Press |
| Anne Elder Award (joint winners)[70] | Cham Zhi Yi | blur by the | Subbed In |
| Gareth Sion Jenkins | Recipes for the Disaster | Five Islands Press | |
| Mary Gilmore Award[71] | Thom Sullivan | Carte Blanche | Vagabond Press |
| Prime Minister's Literary Awards[62] | Omar Sakr | The Lost Arabs | University of Queensland Press |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards[63] | Peter Boyle | Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness | Vagabond Press |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards[55][56] | Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu | Cordite |
Drama
| Award | Category | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards[63] | Script | Kylie Boltin | Missing |
| Jacquelin Perske | The Cry, Episode 2 | ||
| Play | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking | |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards[55] | Drama | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking |
Non-Fiction
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature[57] | Non-Fiction | Meredith Lake | The Bible in Australia | NewSouth |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year[52] | Non-Fiction | Archie Roach | Tell Me Why | Simon and Schuster Australia |
| Illustrated Non-Fiction | Paul Byrnes | The Lost Boys | Affirm Press | |
| National Biography Award[72] | Biography | Patrick Mullins | Tiberius with a Telephone: The life and stories of William McMahon | Scribe Publications |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards[63] | Non-Fiction | Patrick Mullins | Tiberius with a Telephone: The Life and Stories of William McMahon | Scribe Publications |
| New South Wales Premier's History Awards | Australian History | James Dunk | Bedlam at Botany Bay | NewSouth Publishing[73] |
| Community and Regional History | Callum Clayton-Dixon | Surviving New England: A History of Aboriginal Resistance and Resilience Through the First Forty Years of Colonial Apocalypse | Nēwara Aboriginal Corporation[74] | |
| General History | Kate Fullagar | The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire | Yale University Press[75] | |
| Queensland Literary Awards[64] | Non-Fiction | Joe Gorman | Heartland: How Rugby League Explains Queensland | University of Queensland Press |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards[55][56] | Non-Fiction | Christina Thompson | Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia | HarperCollins |
- 1 January – Alexander Frater, travel writer and journalist (born 1937 in Vanuatu)[76]
- 6 January – Timoshenko Aslanides, poet (born 1943)[77]
- 20 January – Steph Bowe, young adult novelist and blogger (born 1994)[78]
- 1 April – Bruce Dawe, poet (born 1930)[79]
- 14 May – Judith Clarke, writer for children and teenagers (born 1943)[80]
- 5 June – Andrew Riemer, literary critic and author (born 1936)[81]
- 10 June – Jesse Blackadder, novelist, screenwriter and journalist (born 1964)[82]
- 7 July – Elizabeth Harrower, novelist (born 1928)[83]
- 10 September – Barbara Ker Wilson, English-born Australian editor and novelist (born 1929)[84]
- 29 September – Ania Walwicz, poet, playwright, prose writer and visual artist (born 1951 in Poland)[85]
- 6 November – Gerald Stone, journalist (born 1933 in USA)[86]
- 14 November – Greg Growden, sports journalist, author and biographer (born 1959/60)[87]
- 9 December – Mungo MacCallum, political journalist and commentator (born 1941)[88]
- 12 December – Wendy Brennan, romantic fiction writer (co-wrote with husband Frank Brennan as Emma Darcy) (born 1940)[89]
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
