The titles shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have been announced.

The shortlisted titles in each category are:

Fiction

• The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
• Losing Face by George Haddad – Read our review
• Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au – Read our review
• Other Houses by Paddy O’Reilly – Read our review – Read an interview
• The Lovers by Yumna Kassab – Read our review

Nonfiction

• Shirley Hazzard: A writing life by Brigitta Olubas – Read our review
• We Come With This Place by Debra Dank – Read our review – Read an extract
• Indelible City: Dispossession and defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim
• My Father and Other Animals: How I took on the family farm by Sam Vincent – Read our review – Listen to a podcast
• A World in a Shell: Snail stories for a time of extinctions by Thom van Dooren

Australian history

• Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm by Alan Atkinson – Read our review
• Justice in Kelly Country: The story of the cop who hunted Australia’s most notorious bushrangers by Lachlan Strahan
• Saving the Reef: The human story behind one of Australia’s greatest environmental treasures by Rohan Lloyd – Read our review
• Black Lives, White Law: Locked up and locked out in Australia by Russell Marks
• Unmaking Angas Downs: Myth and history on a Central Australian pastoral station by Shannyn Palmer

Poetry

• At the Altar of Touch by Gavin Yuan Gao
• Harvest Lingo by Lionel Fogarty
• Exactly As I Am by Rae White
• The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt
• Clean by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

YA

• Sugar by Carly Nugent
• Ask No Questions by Eva Collins
• The Upwelling by Lystra Rose
• What We All Saw by Mike Lucas
• The Greatest Thing by Sarah Winifred Searle

Children’s

• The Dunggiirr Brothers and the Caring Song of the Whale by Aunty Shaa Smith and Yandaarra
• Zadie Ma and the Dog Who Chased the Moon by Gabrielle Wang
• Open Your Heart to Country by Jasmine Seymour
• 11 Words for Love by Randa Abdel-Fattah, illus by Maxine Beneba Clarke – Read more about the book
• My Strange Shrinking Parents by Zeno Sworder – Read our review

Find out more about the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2023