The Age Book of the Year Awards


The Age Book of the Year Awards were annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. After 1998, they were presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Initially, two awards were given, one for fiction, the other for non-fiction work, but in 1993, a poetry award in honour of Dinny O'Hearn was added. The criteria were that the works be "of outstanding literary merit and express Australian identity or character," and be published in the year before the award was made. One of the award-winners was chosen as The Age Book of the Year. The awards were discontinued in 2013.
In 2021 The Age Book of the Year was revived as a fiction prize, with the winner announced at the Melbourne Writers Festival. A non-fiction prize was added the following year.

''The Age'' Book of the Year (from 1974–2012)

YearAuthorTitleRef.
1974'
1975'
1976A Late Picking: Poems 1965–1974
1976Capitalism, Socialism and the Environment
1977Not awarded
1978'
19791915: A Novel of Gallipoli
1980'
1980Homesickness
1981Eric Charles RollsA Million Wild Acres
1982David MaloufFly Away Peter
1983Mr Scobie's Riddle
1984The Bellarmine Jug
1985Illywhacker
1986Sister Ships and Other Stories
1987Stories from the Warm Zone
1988Forty-Seventeen
1989Marsden HordernMariners are Warned: John Lort Stokes and HMA Beagle
1990Blessed City
1991Patrick White : A Life
1992Lovers' Knots
1993The Georges' Wife
1994'
1995Chris Wallace-CrabbeSelected Poems 1956–1994
1996'
1997Jack Maggs
1998Three Dollars
1999Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape
2000Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop
2001Untold Lives and Later Poems
2002Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating PM
2003Of a Boy
2004Totem
2005Plenty: Digressions on Food
2006Friendly Fire
2007Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy
2008American Journeys
2009Things We Didn't See Coming
2010Lovesong
2011Indelible Ink
20121835: The Founding of Melbourne & the Conquest of Australia

First Book