Fogarty Literary Award opens the doors to verse novels
Entries for the 2025 Fogarty Literary Award will open on Saturday 15 March 2025, with a new category making the award more accessible for Western Australian poets.
For the fourth time, the Fogarty Foundation will partner with Fremantle Press to provide one of Australia’s most significant literary prizes for young writers. The Fogarty Literary Award is a biennial prize awarded to an unpublished manuscript by a Western Australian author aged between 18 and 35. The winner receives a cash prize of $20,000, funds for an author tour, a publishing contract with Fremantle Press and a writing fellowship at the Centre for Stories.
Publisher Georgia Richter said the award was traditionally for a work of fiction, narrative non-fiction or young adult fiction, but now included verse novels as well. Richter said, ‘This year we are excited to see what the inclusion of the genre of verse novel will bring to the competition. This has been a form increasing in popularity in recent times in our submissions list, particularly for teenage and young adult readers. As always, we will be looking for stories well told, where the writer has given thought to the connection their work makes with the reader, and where the story is not just a story, but is also bigger than itself – and which resonates long after reading.’
Since the award commenced in 2019, it has attracted 145 entries, and eleven authors longlisted or shortlisted have gone on to be published. Several of these have been acknowledged by major prizes elsewhere, including Where the Line Breaks by Michael Burrows, which won the Sydney Morning Herald / Age Best Young Novelist Award, and Banjawarn by Joshua Kemp , which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Fiction.
The 2025 Fogarty Literary Award winner will be announced at a free community event in May 2025. The winning manuscript will be scheduled for publication in 2026 with a tour planned to coincide with the book’s release.
Entries for the 2025 Fogarty Literary Award will open on Saturday 15 March 2025 and will close at midnight on Friday 18 April 2025. More information and submission guidelines can be found on the Fremantle Press website.
The Fogarty Foundation was established by Brett and Annie Fogarty in 2000 to support and provide educational and leadership opportunities for young people across the spectrum of the Western Australian community. As well as partnering with a range of organisations, the Foundation has initiated its own programs that include the UWA Fogarty Scholarship Program, CoderDojo WA and Fogarty EDvance.
Founded in 2015 by John and Caroline Wood, the Centre for Stories is a vibrant, inclusive literary arts and cultural organisation that uses storytelling to grow skills and confidence, inspire understanding and promote community cohesion.
Fremantle Press is an independent not-for-profit book publisher, based in Western Australia, and embedded in the Australian cultural landscape. Charged with giving voice to Western Australian writers and bringing stories about this place to the world, the Press has published more than a thousand titles and has launched the careers of an extraordinary number of diverse, award-winning and bestselling storytellers, including Indigenous writers and artists.