The Miles Franklin Award: 2026

About Miles Franklin

Miles Franklin defies easy categorisation. Her books, letters and diaries provide evidence of a complex personality, one who often struggled, but who persevered with her life’s work: to redefine the meaning of Australian literature.

After the publication of her debut novel, My Brilliant Career, Miles experienced as much failure as success. Though she sometimes despaired of ever achieving lasting respect as a writer, she is now acknowledged as one of Australia’s literary greats.

Miles Franklin’s Literary Legacy

Miles devoted the final two decades of her life, to promoting Australian literature. It was only after Miles’ death that perhaps her greatest contribution to Australian literature came to light. Her will left provision for the foundation of a literary prize. Its aim was the ‘advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian Literature.’

Miles was never wealthy; at times she struggled to make ends meet. The legacy is testament to her generosity, that she noted in her will her hope that the prize would ease the financial burden of other authors.

Sample of books from the 2026 Longlist

Discipline by Randa Abel-Fattah

Sydney, 2021. Ashraf is an academic whose career is in freefall. Hannah is a young journalist struggling to honour the voices of her community. When a student from an Islamic college is arrested for protesting a university’s ties to an Israeli weapons manufacturer, Ashraf sees an opportunity to exploit the situation for professional gain. Meanwhile Hannah, who is juggling the demands of motherhood and family trauma, is fighting racism at work. As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza intensifies, Ashraf and Hannah must reckon with their choices, values and places in their communities. Will they be prepared to make sacrifices in the pursuit of what is right?

Salt upon the water by Lyn Dickens

1836. When the liberated, mixed heritage Clarissa FitzRoy lands on the glittering shores of the South Australian coast, she has one purpose: to confront the Surveyor-General Colonel William Light about her past and find her missing mother. For Light, Clarissa’s arrival is a flashpoint, upending the new colony and compelling him to face both his complicity in colonial violence and the promise of a different future. But Clarissa has agendas of her own, and the tidal force of their reunion will reveal one final, devastating secret. Lyn Dickens’ debut novel charts the shattering effects of the British East India Company across the globe.

Tenderfoot by Toni Jordan

Brisbane, 1975: Andie Tanner's world is small but whole. Her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own. But real life rarely goes to plan, and the world is bigger and more complicated than Andie could imagine. When she loses everything she cares about - her family, her friends, the dogs - it's up to Andie to reclaim her future. She will need all her wits to survive this new reality of secrets and half-truths, addictions and crime.

Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts

In November 2018 Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest. While wildfires rage, the trace the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry. Over the course of their trip, Eloise, beginning to suspect she might be pregnant, helplessly witnesses Lewis's descent as he struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never quite felt at home.

You Must Remember This by Sean Wilson

Grace can't settle. She can't shake the feeling that someone is missing. You Must Remember This is an eloquent jumble of a family story, as experienced by Grace, an elderly woman with dementia trying to get her moorings in a worsening storm. It contemplates the perils of remembering and forgetting, making your own way in the world and how we seem bound to repeat the patterns of the past. Most profoundly it's about sensing what it's like to live on while your faculties dim and about finding peace. A haunting and beautifully observed story of memory, ageing, and identity, where the lines between past and present are blurred.