# 2020 in Australian literature

This is a list of historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2020.

## Major publications
### Literary fiction

* Patrick Allington – Rise & Shine
* Robbie Arnott – The Rain Heron
* James Bradley – Ghost Species
* Trent Dalton – All Our Shimmering Skies
* Jon Doust – Return Ticket
* Chris Flynn – Mammoth
* Anna Goldsworthy – Melting Moments
* Kate Grenville – A Room Made of Leaves
* Gail Jones – Our Shadows
* Tom Keneally – The Dickens Boy
* Sofie Laguna – Infinite Splendours
* Bem Le Hunte – Elephants with Headlights
* Carol Lefevre – Murmurations
* Amanda Lohrey – The Labyrinth
* Laura Jean McKay – The Animals in That Country
* Andrew Pippos – Lucky's
* Mirandi Riwoe – Stone Sky Gold Mountain
* Ronnie Scott – The Adversary
* Craig Silvey – Honeybee
* Philip Salom – The Fifth Season
* Nardi Simpson – Song of the Crocodile
* Madeleine Watts – The Inland Sea
* Gina Wilkinson – When the Apricots Bloom
* Pip Williams – The Dictionary of Lost Words
* Daniel Davis Wood – At the Edge of the Solid World
* Evie Wyld – The Bass Rock

### Children's and young adult fiction

* Davina Bell – The End of the World is Bigger than Love
* Alex Dyson – When It Drops
* Alison Evans – Euphoria Kids
* Zana Fraillon – The Lost Soul Atlas
* Jane Godwin – When Rain Turns to Snow
* Kate Gordon – Aster's Good, Right Things
* Libby Hathorn and Lisa Hathorn-Jarman – No! Never!
* Will Kostakis
** Rebel Gods
** The Greatest Hit
* Anna McGregor – Anemone Is Not The Enemy
* Cath Moore – Metal Fish, Falling Snow
* Jaclyn Moriarty – The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst
* Sally Murphy – Worse Things
* Katrina Nannestad – We Are Wolves
* Garth Nix – The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
* Kirli Saunders – Bindi
* Shaun Tan – Dog
* Jessica Townsend – Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow

### Crime

* Anne Buist – The Long Shadow
* Garry Disher – Consolation
* Candice Fox – Gathering Dark
* Sulari Gentill – A Testament of Character
* Jane Harper – The Survivors
* Sally Hepworth – The Good Sister
* Dervla McTiernan – The Good Turn
* J. P. Pomare – Tell Me Lies
* Michael Robotham – When She Was Good
* Sarah Thornton – White Throat
* David Whish-Wilson – True West

### Science Fiction and Fantasy

* Max Barry – Providence
* Trudi Canavan – Maker's Curse
* Greg Egan – Instantiation
* Gillian Polack – Poison & Light
* Paul Voermans – The White Library

### Poetry

* Laurie Duggan – Homer Street
* Michael Farrell – Family Trees
* Kate Llewellyn – Harbour
* Felicity Plunkett – A Kinder Sea
* Ellen van Neerven
** Homeland Calling: Words from a new generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices (as editor)
** Throat

### Non-fiction

* Julia Baird – Phosphorescence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark
* Richard Fidler – The Golden Maze: A History of Prague
* Michael Gawenda – The Powerbroker: Mark Leibler, an Australian Life
* Eddie Jaku – The Happiest Man on Earth
* John Kinsella – Displaced: A Rural Life
* Grace Karskens – People of the River: Lost worlds of early Australia
* Michael Gawenda – The Powerbroker: Mark Leibler, an Australian
* Sophie McNeill – We Can't Say We Didn't Know: Dispatches from an age of impunity
* Brenda Niall – Friends and Rivals: Four Great Australian Writers: Barbara Baynton, Ethel Turner, Nettie Palmer, Henry Handel Richardson
* Caroline Overington – Missing William Tyrrell
* Christopher Pyne – The Insider: The scoops, the scandals and the serious business within the Canberra bubble
* Cassandra Pybus – Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse
* Miranda Tapsell – Top End Girl
* Robert Tickner – Ten Doors Down: The Story of an Extraordinary Adoption Reunion
* Malcolm Turnbull – A Bigger Picture

## Awards and honours

Note: these awards were presented in the year in question.

### Lifetime achievement

| Award | Author |
| Patrick White Award | Gregory Day |

### Literary

| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
| ALS Gold Medal | Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu | Cordite Press |
| Colin Roderick Award | Sally Young | Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires | NewSouth Publishing |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year | Favel Parrett | There Was Still Love | Hachette |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Tara June Winch | The Yield | Penguin Random House |
| Stella Prize | Jess Hill | See What You Made Me Do | Black Inc |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking | Belvoir and Co-Curious |

### Fiction
#### National

| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
| Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature | Jessica Townsend | Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow | Hachette |
| ARA Historical Novel Prize | Mirandi Riwoe | Stone Sky Gold Mountain | University of Queensland Press |
| The Australian/Vogel Literary Award | K. M. Kruimink | A Treacherous Country | Allen & Unwin |
| Barbara Jefferis Award | Lucy Treloar | Wolfe Island | Pan Macmillan |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year – Fiction | Favel Parrett | There Was Still Love | Hachette |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year – Debut Fiction | Suzanne Daniel | Allegra in Three Parts | Pan Macmillan |
| Miles Franklin Literary Award | Tara June Winch | The Yield | Penguin Random House |
| Prime Minister's Literary Awards | Tara June Winch | The Yield | Penguin Random House |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Tara June Winch | The Yield | Penguin Random House |
| Queensland Literary Awards | Mirandi Riwoe | Stone Sky Gold Mountain | University of Queensland Press |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | Christos Tsiolkas | Damascus | Allen & Unwin |

### Children and Young Adult
#### National

| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
| Children's Book of the Year Award | Older Readers | Vikki Wakefield | This Is How We Change the Ending | Text Publishing |
| Children's Book of the Year Award | Younger Readers | Pip Harry | The Little Wave | University of Queensland Press |
| Children's Book of the Year Award | Picture Book | Chris McKimmie | I Need a Parrot | Ford Street |
| Children's Book of the Year Award | Early Childhood | Frances Watts | My Friend Fred | Allen & Unwin |
| Children's Book of the Year Award | Eve Pownall Award for Information Books | Bruce Pascoe | Young Dark Emu: A truer history | Magabala Books |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year | Children's | Sami Bayly | The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals | Lothian |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year | Young Adult | Wal Chim | The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling | Allen & Unwin |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Children's | Lian Tanner & Jonathan Bentley | Ella and the Ocean | Allen & Unwin |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Young People's | Karen Foxlee | Lenny's Book of Everything | Allen & Unwin |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | Young Adult Fiction | Helena Fox | How It Feels to Float | Pan Macmillan Australia |

### Crime and Mystery
#### International

| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
| Barry Award | Novel | Jane Harper | The Lost Man | Pan Macmillan |

#### National

| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
| Davitt Award | Novel | Meg Mundell | The Trespassers | University of Queensland Press |
| Davitt Award | Young adult novel | Astrid Scholte | Four Dead Queens | Allen & Unwin |
| Davitt Award | Children's novel | Jenny Blackford | The Girl in the Mirror | Eagle Books |
| Davitt Award | True crime | Adele Ferguson | Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate cover-ups. One Journalist's Fight for the Truth | HarperCollins |
| Davitt Award | Debut novel | Susan Hurley | Eight Lives | Affirm Press |
| Davitt Award | Readers' choice | Dervla McTiernan | The Scholar | HarperCollins |
| Davitt Award | Readers' choice | Emma Viskic | Darkness for Light | Echo Publishing |
| Ned Kelly Award | Novel | Christian White | The Wife and the Widow | Affirm Press |
| Ned Kelly Award | First novel | Natalie Conyer | Present Tense | Clan Destine Press |
| Ned Kelly Award | True crime | Dan Box | Bowraville | Viking Books |

### Science fiction

| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
| Ditmar Award | Novel | Gillian Polack | The Year of the Fruit Cake | IFWG Publishing |
| Ditmar Award | Best Short Fiction | Rivqa Rafael | "Whom My Soul Loves" | |

### Poetry

| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
| Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature | Natalie Harkin | Archival-Poetics | Vagabond Press |
| Anne Elder Award (joint winners) | Cham Zhi Yi | blur by the | Subbed In |
| Anne Elder Award (joint winners) | Gareth Sion Jenkins | Recipes for the Disaster | Five Islands Press |
| Mary Gilmore Award | Thom Sullivan | Carte Blanche | Vagabond Press |
| Prime Minister's Literary Awards | Omar Sakr | The Lost Arabs | University of Queensland Press |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Peter Boyle | Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness | Vagabond Press |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu | Cordite |

### Drama

| Award | Category | Author | Title |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Script | Kylie Boltin | Missing |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Script | Jacquelin Perske | The Cry, Episode 2 |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Play | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | Drama | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking |

### Non-Fiction

| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
| Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature | Non-Fiction | Meredith Lake | The Bible in Australia | NewSouth |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year | Non-Fiction | Archie Roach | Tell Me Why | Simon and Schuster Australia |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year | Illustrated Non-Fiction | Paul Byrnes | The Lost Boys | Affirm Press |
| National Biography Award | Biography | Patrick Mullins | Tiberius with a Telephone: The life and stories of William McMahon | Scribe Publications |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards | Non-Fiction | Patrick Mullins | Tiberius with a Telephone: The Life and Stories of William McMahon | Scribe Publications |
| New South Wales Premier's History Awards | Australian History | James Dunk | Bedlam at Botany Bay | NewSouth Publishing |
| New South Wales Premier's History Awards | Community and Regional History | Callum Clayton-Dixon | Surviving New England: A History of Aboriginal Resistance and Resilience Through the First Forty Years of Colonial Apocalypse | Nēwara Aboriginal Corporation |
| New South Wales Premier's History Awards | General History | Kate Fullagar | The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire | Yale University Press |
| Queensland Literary Awards | Non-Fiction | Joe Gorman | Heartland: How Rugby League Explains Queensland | University of Queensland Press |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | Non-Fiction | Christina Thompson | Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia | HarperCollins |

## Deaths

* 1 January – Alexander Frater, travel writer and journalist (born 1937 in Vanuatu)
* 6 January – Timoshenko Aslanides, poet (born 1943)
* 20 January – Steph Bowe, young adult novelist and blogger (born 1994)
* 1 April – Bruce Dawe, poet (born 1930)
* 14 May – Judith Clarke, writer for children and teenagers (born 1943)
* 5 June – Andrew Riemer, literary critic and author (born 1936)
* 10 June – Jesse Blackadder, novelist, screenwriter and journalist (born 1964)
* 7 July – Elizabeth Harrower, novelist (born 1928)
* 10 September – Barbara Ker Wilson, English-born Australian editor and novelist (born 1929)
* 29 September – Ania Walwicz, poet, playwright, prose writer and visual artist (born 1951 in Poland)
* 6 November – Gerald Stone, journalist (born 1933 in USA)
* 14 November – Greg Growden, sports journalist, author and biographer (born 1959/60)
* 9 December – Mungo MacCallum, political journalist and commentator (born 1941)
* 12 December – Wendy Brennan, romantic fiction writer (co-wrote with husband Frank Brennan as Emma Darcy) (born 1940)