2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award Shortlist: Snubs, Surprises, and Favorites

The shortlist for the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award — Australia's most prestigious literary prize — features a dual winner (Michelle de Kretser), two repeat shortlistees (Brian Castro and Fiona McFarlane), and three writers shortlisted for the first time (Julie Janson, Siang Lu and debut author Winnie Dunn).

Tim Winton, longlisted for his dystopian cli-fi thriller Juice, missed out on the shortlist and his chance to bag a fifth Miles Franklin award.

2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist:

• Chinese Postman by Brian Castro
• Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser
• Dirt Poor Islanders by Winnie Dunn
• Compassion by Julie Janson
• Ghost Cities by Siang Lu
• Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane

The shortlist has grown increasingly diverse in recent years, and 2025 is no exception, with five writers of colour in the running for the $60,000 award.

Female writers have also dominated the prize in the past decade. If Castro or Lu win, it will be the first time a male author has taken out the award since 2016, when AS Patrić won for his debut novel, Black Rock White City.

Last year, Waanyi writer Alexis Wright won for Praiseworthy, an epic novel set in northern Australia that also took out the Stella Prize. This year's winner will be announced on July 24.

To take a closer look at the shortlist, we've brought together The Book Show's Claire Nichols and Sarah L'Estrange, The Bookshelf's Kate Evans, and writer and critic Declan Fry.

Surprises and snubs

Sarah L'Estrange: Each of the six books investigates race, class and gender in contemporary Australia but in different ways. It's very hard to compare books like Ghost Cities and Dirt Poor Islanders because they're written in such distinct ways, but they both encourage us to think about narrative and who owns stories.

Declan Fry: I was surprised to see Highway 13 on the list — it's a short story collection. That's a first, and it could be the most radical thing the Miles Franklin has ever done. I'm here for it — I love to see the definition of the novel always expanding.

Claire Nichols: We're getting a novel competition that is moving further from the traditional novel form.

DF: Many of these novels are also quite formless.

According to the source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.