Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are a series of writing awards which celebrate and reward those who have made an exceptional contribution to Australian literature and intellectual life. The awards are held annually with hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes given out each year.

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Categories

The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards have six categories which you can enter:

  • fiction
  • non-fiction
  • young adult literature
  • children’s literature
  • poetry
  • Australian history

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Prizes

Each category for the The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards has a cash prize of $80,000. The four runner-up shortlisted candidates each are awarded $5,000.

These prizes are tax free and open to all Australian citizens and permanent residents.

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards Entry Requirements

  • To enter you must be an Australian citizen or permanent resident.
  • The book being entered must have been first published or released within the previous calendar year to be considered.
  • The entry must have been available for general sale, broadcast or distribution in Australia during the previous calendar year.
  • Electronic copies are eligible as long as a physical hard copy format is also published.

Non-eligible entries:

  • Second edition books.
  • Published or electronic versions of books originally released in a previous calendar year.
  • Works consisting primarily of photographs or illustrations that include only limited descriptive text or captions.
  • However, works in the children’s literature category consisting of images or pictures only, with no text, are eligible.
  • Biographies of, or works by, current (at the time of entry) members of an Australian or foreign parliament or executive.
  • Books that are collections of essays or stories by multiple contributors, compiled by an editor, that acknowledge the work of the authors in their own right.