Seven award winning books by Canberra authors you need to read
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Looking for a new book? These local award winners are worth picking up.
This year MARION (formerly known as the ACT Writers Centre), received a record number of applications to the 2025 ACT Literary Awards – and the shortlist was outstanding.
Held annually to recognise and celebrate the achievements of writers from the ACT and surrounding regions, the awards welcome both self-published and traditionally published works and recognise work published in 2024 across four categories: children’s books (including picture books, middle-grade and young adult fiction), fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
Following the announcement of the winners, here are the seven winning books – and from a coming-of-age story filled with romance to the First Nations story of Cook’s arrival, you’ll thank us after you finish these page-turners.
Children’s Literature
Big, Big Love by Lisa Fuller and Samantha Campbell
Written for younger readers, this book is an ode to motherhood. Filled with beautiful illustrations by Samantha Campbell and what’s described as a “soft, lilting text” that is easy for children to follow along, it’s all about embracing the message of unconditional love and acceptance – perfect for a night curled up with your little one.
Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger by Jackie French
Jackie French has done it again. Perfect for Middle Grade readers, her book Tigg and the Bandicoot Bushranger is a historical adventure set in 1859 and tells the story of the youngest bushranger on the Ballarat goldfields, Tigg. Full of mystery, bushranging, hardships, betrayals and redemption, it promises to be an interesting and entertaining read.
The Unexpected Mess of It All by Gabrielle Tozer
One for Young Adult fiction fans, this coming-of-age story will be one you won’t be able to put down. Telling the story of a funny and fraught ‘enemies-to-will-they-won’t-they’ romance between family friends Jamila and Billy, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll flash back to high school (in the best way possible…we hope).
Fiction
Compassion by Julie Janson
From the acclaimed author of the Miles Franklin longlisted Madukka: The River Serpent (UWA) and Benevolence, Compassion continues Julie Janson’s emotional and intense literary exploration of the complex and dangerous lives of Aboriginal women during the 1800s in colonial New South Wales. But this book isn’t just a retelling of history from a First Nations female perspective: it’s also inspired by the life of her own great-great grandmother, Mary Thomas. Exciting, gripping and a little bit violent, it’s a moving must-read book about colonial injustice and Indigenous resilience.
Nonfiction
An Unexpected Life by Vesna Cvjetićanin
This self-published work tells the remarkable journeys of twelve migrant women and their lives in Australia. The twist? Vesna is one of those women, and they’re all her friends. Telling the stories of how they all overcame adversity and thrived against the odds, women from Romania, Afghanistan, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Peru, North Macedonia, Chile, Bosnia, Malaysia and South Africa, share insights into their unexpected lives while celebrating their indomitable spirit.
Warra Warra Wai: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook, and what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People by Darren Rix and Craig Cormick
Have you ever wondered what First Nations people saw and felt when James Cook navigated their shores in 1770? This is your chance to learn. While we know the European story from diaries, journals and letters, Warra Warra Wai (the expression called to Cook and his crew when they tried to make landfall in Botany Bay) tells the First Nations version of these first encounters – stories told to Darren Rix (a Gunditjmara-GunaiKurnai man, radio reporter and Archie Roach’s nephew) and co-author Craig Cormick, who went to all the places on the east coast that were renamed by Cook, and listened to what the communities had to say.
Poetry
Makarra by Barrina South
Written over years in various locations – riverbanks, hospital corridors, writers retreats, oceans, in the leaf litter photographing fungi, by the fire with two dogs and in hotel rooms on business trips – the poems in this book are visceral, tender, political and personal. Exploring Blak sisterhood, motherhood, womanhood, kinship, friendship, solidarity, hope, loss, fear, and more, poetry lovers want to put this debut collection down.
Looking for more?
Here are some other highly commended books by local authors that you can add to your TBR.
- Flora: Australia’s Most Curious Plants by Tania McCartney
- Sensational Australian Animals by Stephanie Owen Reeder and Cher Hart
- The Sea Captain’s Wife by Jackie French
- Australian Carillonists by Melissa Bray
- Max Dupain: A Portrait by Helen Ennis
- Refugia by Elfie Shiosaki
Feature image: Photox.
