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Miles Franklin Award

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2025, the award is valued at A$60,000.

Winners, old dating convention

The prize originally took its date from the year in which eligible novels were published, ignoring the fact that it was not awarded until the following year.

1957–1959

1960–1969

1970–1979

1980–1987

Winners, new dating convention

The prize is still for the best novel published during the preceding year, but now bears the date of the year in which it is awarded. While the change meant there was no prize called "1988", there is no break in the annual series. The award for novels published in 1987 was announced on 10 May 1988 as the "1987" prize (won by Glenda Adams), and the award for novels published in 1988 was announced on 25 July 1989 as the "1989" prize (won by Peter Carey).

1989

1990–1999

2000–2009

2010–2019

2020–

Controversies

Author Frank Moorhouse was disqualified from consideration for his novel Grand Days because the story was set in Europe during the 1920s and was not sufficiently Australian.

1995 winner Helen Darville, also known as Helen Demidenko and Helen Dale, won for The Hand That Signed the Paper and sparked a debate about authenticity in Australian literature. Darville claimed to be of Ukrainian descent and said it was fiction based on family history. Writer David Marr, who presented the award to her, said that revelations about her true background did not "alter a single thing about the quality of the story, it knocks completely out of the water her answers to critics who said it was not historically accurate, that she knows because of direct family experience, which appears to be complete bull----."

Even before the hoax was revealed, Darville’s book was considered anti-Semitic and justified the genocide of Jewish people. It was also later revealed that she plagiarised from multiple sources.

In 2004, three judges resigned due to what they viewed as the commodification of the awards.

2022 longlisted writer John Hughes was accused of plagiarising significant sections of his 2021 book The Dogs from Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich's nonfiction book The Unwomanly Face of War. Nearly 60 similarities and identical sentences were found in a comparison of Hughes' novel and the English version of Alexievich's book. The Guardian newspaper also found similarities between incidents described in the books, including the central scene from which The Dogs takes its title. Further investigation found other examples of plagiarism in the novel and that Hughes copied sections of classic texts including The Great Gatsby and Anna Karenina without acknowledging the original source. The book was subsequently withdrawn from competition.

The Stella Prize was created in 2013 as a reaction to the supposed under-representation of women as winners of literary prizes, in particular the 2011 Miles Franklin Award shortlist. However, since 2013, only three men have won the Miles Franklin Award.

Repeat winners

Shortlisted works

Shortlisted titles are only shown for the years 1987 onwards. No record has yet been found for any shortlists being released prior to that year.

1980s

In 1989, the date by which the prize is identified changed from the year of publication to the year of announcement. While there was no award called "1988", there is no break in the annual series (see above).

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Longlisted works

Longlisted titles are only shown for the years 2005 onwards. That was the first year that such a list was released by the judging panel. The number of works included on the longlist varies from year to year.

2005–2009

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010–2019

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020–

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Notes

See also

References

Further reading

External links