The Sharpe Report – 3 October 2025

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Everything Books and Publishing Australia

 Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

• The Australian Society of Authors has announced the 2025 Blake-Beckett Trust Scholarship shortlist. This scholarship is awarded to an Australian author to provide them time to work on a current manuscript. The winner will receive $35,000 and the runner up $15,000. For more information see their website.
• The Sydney Jewish Writers Festival has announced their Jewish Poetry Project. This is a month-long outdoor exhibition of Jewish poetry with the theme ‘The Door is Always Open’. For more information on the project see their website.
• The Australian War Memorial literary prize has deferred awarding the Les Carlyon Literary Prize. This comes after controversy about who controls recognition of Australian military history writing and how institutions handle uncomfortable truths.  The judging panel decided to award the prize to Chris Masters author of Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies, and War Crimes a book about Ben Roberts-Smith. In short: The award wasn’t given because the winning book is about alleged war crimes by a once-celebrated soldier. The War Memorial avoided the controversy by scrapping the award, but that decision itself has become controversial and instead seen as prioritising reputation over transparency and truth.
• Shalom Collective Australian Jewish Book Awards have announced their 2025 winners:

• • Leslie and Sophie Caplan Award for Jewish Nonfiction: Treasures of Old Jewish Sydney/Jana Vytrhlik
  • Jewish Independent Young Jewish Writers Award: Ellie’s Table / Ellie Bouhadana
  • Szymon (Simon) Klitenik Award for Jewish Fiction: The Star on the Grave / Linda Morgolin Royal

• The Australian Crime Writers Association has announced the 2025 winners of the Ned Kelly Award winners:
  • Best crime fiction: The Creeper / Margaret Hickey
  • Best true crime writing: A Thousand Miles From Care / Steve Johnson
  • Best debut crime fiction: All You Took From Me / Lisa Kenway
  • Best international crime fiction: A Case of Matricide/ (Graeme Macrae Burnet
• The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for 2025 have been annoucned by Writing Australia:
  • Fiction: Theory & Practice / Michelle de Kretser
  • Nonfiction: Mean Streak / Rick Morton
  • Australian history: Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS Crisis / Geraldine Fela
  • Poetry: The Other Side of Daylight / David Brooks
  • Children’s Literature: Leo and Ralph / Peter Carnavas
  • Young Adult: The Invocations / Krystal Sutherland 

Books in the Media

National

• The Butterfly Thief / Walter Marsh (History, Memoir)
• Defiance: Stories from Nature and its Defenders / Bob Brown (Memoir)
• One Story / Pip Finkemeyer (Fiction)
• Gravity Let Me Go / Trent Dalton (Fiction)

ACT

• Average at Best / Astrid Jorgensen (Memoir)
• The Bank Robber’s Boy / Peter Norris (Memoir)
• Mother Mary Comes to Me / Arundhati Roy (Memoir)
• Next to Heaven / James Frey (Thriller)
• There’s a Prawn in Parliament House / Annabel Crabb (Children’s Non-Fiction)
• The Road Trip / Tricia Stringer (Fiction)
• Role Model / Samantha Harris & Myrna Davison (Memoir)
• Simple Healthy Recipes / Teresa Cutter (Cookbook)
• Walking Sydney / Belinda Castles (Non-Fiction)

NSW + QLD + VIC

• Boobs / Lisa Portolan & Amanda Goff (Society and Culture)
• Boudicca’s Daughter / Elodie Harper (Fiction)
• Calendar / Vanessa Berry (Non-Fiction)
• Collisions / Alec Nevala-Lee (Biography)
• Cursed Daughters / Oyinkan Braithwaite (Fiction)
• Destination Moon / Kate Reid (Memoir)
• A Great Act of Love / Heather Rose (Fiction)
• Gravity Let Me Go / Trent Dalton (Fiction)
• Gunpowder Creek / Alex Dook (Fiction)
• Last One Out / Jane Harper (Fiction)
• Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World / Adele Zeynep Walton (Technology)
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny / Kiran Desai (Fiction)
• The Midnight Timetable / Bora Chung (Fiction)
• The Möbius Book / Catherine Lacey (Fiction)
• The Monster of Harrods: Al-Fayed and the secret, shameful history of a British institution / Alison Kervin (Social Sciences)
• Pictures of You / Tony Birch (Short Stories)
• The Secret Life of a Cemetery / Benoit Gallot (Social Sciences)
• Seed / Bri Lee (Fiction)
• The Seeker and the Sage / Brigid Delaney (Self-Help)
• The Soldier’s Daughter / Fiona McIntosh (Fiction)
• No Straight Road Takes You There / Rebecca Solnit (Literary Essays)
• This is for Everyone / Tim Berners-Lee (Technology)
• Unfinished Revolution: The feminist fightback / Virginia Haussegger (Non-Fiction)
• When We Were Monsters / Jennifer Niven (YA Fiction)
• A Woman’s Eye, Her Art / Drusilla Modjeska (Art History)
• Will There Ever Be Another You / Patricia Lockwood (Literary Fiction)

TAS

• Average at Best  / Astrid Jorgensen (Memoir)
• Conspiracy Nation / Ariel Bogle & Cam Wilson (Non-Fiction)
• Dust / Michael Brissenden (Fiction)
• A Particularly Nasty Case / Adam Kay (Fiction)
• The Shifting Fog / Kate Morton (Fiction)

*Information gathered from Books+Publishing

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