This year’s SMH Best Young Australian Novelists: Katerina Gibson, Winnie Dunn and Jumaana Abdu.Credit: Eddie Jim, Steven Siewert
Now in its 29th year, The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists award champions the most exciting emerging voices in Australian fiction, shining a spotlight on writers aged 35 and under. Past winners include authors who have gone on to leave a lasting mark on Australia’s literary landscape – and this year’s cohort is no different.
The 2025 winners are Jumaana Abdu, Winnie Dunn and Katerina Gibson – three writers whose novels crack open personal and political truths with striking ambition and voice. They’ll each receive $5000 thanks to the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
The judges were: Spectrum editors Melanie Kembrey and Robert Moran, and previous winners Andre Dao and Malcolm Knox.
Jumaana Abdu’s Stella Prize-shortlisted Translations is a lyrical and psychologically astute debut about grief, faith and connection, following a mother and daughter’s retreat to rural NSW after personal tragedy.
In Dirt Poor Islanders, Winnie Dunn delivers a bold debut that reclaims the narrative around Pasifika communities in western Sydney, challenging tired stereotypes with warmth, wit and unflinching honesty.
And Katerina Gibson, now a two-time recipient of the prize, cements her place as a singular literary voice with her first novel The Temperature – a work of emotional precision and sly humour that asks what it means to connect, even when everything feels like it’s falling apart.
We asked the winners about their writing lives, their biggest distractions and what keeps them going in a noisy world.
Jumaana Abdu
Jumaana Abdu’s Translations is a poignant exploration of identity, grief and starting anew.Credit: Steven Siewert
What was the starting point for your winning novel?
I had this flash of a woman wishing total disaster would strike her so she could start again fresh. I wrote the novel as a way of understanding that wish and how to soothe it.
What’s the most un-writerly thing about you?
Analogy, metaphor and symbols are all powerfully irresistible to me in fiction – I follow them to their extreme. But in life I really distrust the use of figurative devices. I find that people resort to analogies to describe political situations, for example, when they haven’t done the research to inform their point.
How do you hold on to your voice in a noisy literary landscape?
Whenever I feel pressure to write something, I stop and ask myself, “Who are you writing it for?” And if it’s not for myself or the people I love, I don’t write it.
Our lives are subjects deserving of serious creative, spiritual and academic inquiry.
What’s a book you pretend to have read but haven’t (yet)?
I have enough passing knowledge of Harry Potter to avoid causing fainting spells when it comes out that I never read the series – but I think that’s considered a badge of honour these days.
What’s something completely unrelated to writing that you’re absurdly good at?
When it comes to inserting intravenous cannulas, I almost never miss.
What’s something you learned about yourself while writing this novel?
At the beginning of the novel, Aliyah is so panicked about defining herself incorrectly that she tries to opt out of society altogether. I learnt alongside her that there is a way to exist outside identity politics, to be understood and loved by others without over-explaining.
What’s next for you, and how are you thinking about your future as a writer?
Many of my relatives in Gaza have been killed in the last year, which has made me question the point of fiction at this time. But I think we have to make art because we are not, as [former Israeli minister of defence] Yoav Gallant described us, “human animals”. Our lives are subjects deserving of serious creative, spiritual and academic inquiry. My next novel is far more ambitious than my first; I find power in insisting on that ambition.
Winnie Dunn
Winnie Dunn’s Dirt Poor Islanders portrays, with heart and humour, Western Sydney’s Tongan community.Credit: Steven Siewert
What was the starting point for your winning novel?
I was born into a large Tongan family from Mount Druitt in western Sydney. Growing up, I was surrounded by limiting and demonising portrayals of my culture and community. Struggle Street was an infamous SBS documentary which “examined” the lives of people from my ’hood as nothing but dangerous, impoverished and uneducated. Unfortunately, the only representations of Tongans in Australia were Summer Heights High (ABC, 2007) and Jonah from Tonga (ABC, 2014). The character known as Jonah appeared in both TV programs as a brown-face minstrel played by white Australian actor Chris Lilley. Reinforcing classic brown-male stereotypes, Jonah was depicted as illiterate, misogynistic, homophobic and violent. I specifically wrote Dirt Poor Islanders to invite Australia into the reality of my forcibly marginalised yet beautifully nuanced community.
What’s one piece of writing advice that turned out to be wrong for you?
A medical professional who had no formal education in creative writing once told me: “burst onto the scene by sheer force of volume and genius” and “better to die unpublished rather than take criticism”. As a writer who spent four years studying literature and creative arts at the university level, and another eight years developing my skills through research, training and critical dialogue with my peers (writers, editors and publishers), I understand the opposite to be true: “ease yourself onto the scene through patience, hard work and humility” and “better to die unpublished rather than reject well-meaning feedback”.
What’s your go-to distraction when you’re avoiding a difficult scene?
During the writing of a difficult scene I believe in taking care of myself, and a balanced diet and a vigorous exercise routine. If my face is a little puffy from crying, I’ll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 18 now. After I remove the ice pack I hop into a searing hot shower, where I use a water-activated gel cleanser. Then a honey almond body scrub and, on the face, an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply a herb mint facial mask, which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare to continue smashing my head on the keyboard. All the while I think: there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, wait, I mean Winnie Dunn. Some kind of abstraction but there is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory. I simply am not there.
You’ve got 30 seconds in a bookstore to recommend one book (that isn’t yours). Go.
The Tribe by Michael Mohammed Ahmad, which won this very award in 2015 – exactly 10 years ago.
Like any muscle, the writing mind must be stretched, sprinted and strengthened.
Do you have a daily writing routine or do you thrive in chaos?
The writing mind is a muscle despite originating, for the most part, from our brain, which is an organ. Like any muscle, the writing mind must be stretched, sprinted and strengthened. With Dirt Poor Islanders I had a goal of writing a minimum of 200 words per day and researching (e.g. reading) around five pages per day. This is because I “believe in taking care of myself, and a balanced diet and a vigorous exercise routine” …
What advice would you give to others who want to write a novel?
A ngatu, which is a large and sacred Tongan mat, is first created from strips of bark that are then beaten into thin sheets. Start small. Can you construct an engaging sentence? Can you build an original short story? If not, find the joy in learning, often painfully, how to do so.
What’s next for you, and how are you thinking about your future as a writer?
The industry has been generous to me and I especially give my love and gratitude to my cultural community for lifting me as the first Tongan-Australian novelist. What’s next for me is to give back. I’m currently working with 14 up-and-coming Pasifika writers to develop Australia’s first mainstream anthology to showcase creative non-fiction works from those of Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Maori, Rotuman, Torres Strait Islander and many other South Pacific cultural backgrounds. The future is FOB: Fresh Off the Books.
Katerina Gibson
Katerina Gibson has been named a Best Young Australian Novelist for the second time with her debut novel The Temperature.Credit: Eddie Jim
This is the second time you’ve been named an SMH Best Young Australian Novelist. Be honest, which felt better?
This one feels a bit more legitimate now I am a real novelist (read = not a fraud) but both have felt very lovely.
Your debut short-story collection won some big literary prizes. Did you splurge on anything?
I did buy myself a ridiculously expensive jumper that makes me look like Freddy Krueger – it’s fabulous – but no, that money is for rent and food and living.
Did you feel any pressure following up your debut and, if so, how did you deal with it?
Occasionally collapse under the weight of it all, but in my good moments I’d probably remind myself that I’m pretty lucky in the scheme of things, that any pressure is just perceived, and if I want the work to be good I’d do best to read a book and write, or spend time with friends and get on with my life, instead of worrying about it.
It’s a little hard, not to be a total bummer, to think about the future as a writer, or even the future at all. It’s a tough gig.
Which author would you want to be stuck in a lift with – and which one would you make up an excuse to avoid?
I would prefer if I was never stuck in a lift at all, but I feel like Michael Winkler would know how to get us out of it while remaining calm or at least entertaining. I would never want to be stuck in a lift with Alexis Wright; I’d either fold in on myself from self-consciousness and remain silently awkward the whole time, or start gushing and being weird about how much I loved Praiseworthy. I’d prefer not to subject anyone to that.
Which fictional character do you secretly think is a bit like you?
I’ll never tell.
What do you hope readers carry with them after finishing your work?
A little sense of joie de vivre, or very optimistically a sudden recklessness, courage required of real human connection. Or at least another book.
What’s next for you, and how are you thinking about your future as a writer?
I’m trying to work on something but it’s a mess, I’ve been a bit of a mess, and it’ll require time, which means funding. And it’s a little hard, not to be a total bummer, to think about the future as a writer, or even the future at all. It’s a tough gig, economically and spiritually speaking, and you never know if your work is being read or appreciated. Realistically, I don’t have any other skills, and I know that it’s the only thing that really makes me happy, or brings my life meaning. And I do – this is trite – but I do feel like I’m meant to do it, which is to say I’m here for the long haul. Things like this prize help.
This year’s The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists will be in conversation in a free event at the Sydney Writers’ Festival at 4.15pm at Carriageworks on Friday, May 23. This project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.