Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Aurealis Awards, presented today at a ceremony in Brisbane as part of GenreCon. A recording of the ceremony will be available from the GenreCon team next week, so sign up now if you would like to receive a link.

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us at the ceremony, and particularly to our host, Eugen Bacon, for taking the lead on the show, and the team at GenreCon for organising the event at such an amazing venue. We also take this opportunity to once again thank the judging panels for all their hard work making the difficult decisions of shortlists and the winning works, and all the creators and publishers who continue to make the Aurealis Awards Australia’s premier speculative fiction award each year.

BEST CHILDREN’S FICTION

Little Bones

Sandy Bigna

(UQP)

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL / ILLUSTRATED WORK

Higher Ground

Tull Swannakit 

(New Frontier Publishing) 

BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY

“Crown Tourney”

Tansy Rayner Roberts 

(Crown Tourney: Ten Tales of Deadly Damsels, Cursed Castles and Edged Weapons, self-published)

BEST HORROR SHORT STORY

“It Will Only Hurt If I Want It To”

Kirstyn McDermott 

(Midnight Echo #20, AHWA)

BEST HORROR NOVELLA

“Walpurgis”

Ron Schroer 

(Strange Legacy 2025: Creature Feature, Thorncroft Legacy)

BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY

“Dying Mountain”

Baden M Chant 

(Aurealis Magazine #177)

BEST FANTASY NOVELLA

Cinder House

Freya Marske 

(Pan Macmillan)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY

“Do Motorcycle Centaurs Dream of Five Stars and a Tip?”

Corey Jae White & Maddison Stoff 

(Interzone, MYY Press) 

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA

“The Hidden God”

T R Napper 

(Asimov’s Science Fiction March/April 2025)

BEST COLLECTION

The Leper’s Garden and Other Contagions

Jeff Clulow 

(Third Eye Press)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

AUSTRAL 2025

Matt Richardson, Michaela Teschendorff & Ciar Fhearchair (Eds.) 

(Meridian Australis)

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

The Serpent Called Mercy

Roanne Lau 

(New Dawn)

BEST HORROR NOVEL

Orpheus Nine

Chris Flynn 

(Hachette Australia)

BEST FANTASY NOVEL 

Upon a Starlit Tide

Kell Woods 

(HarperCollins Publishers)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

Wastelands

Samira Lloyd

(Arianhrod Press)

CONVENORS’ AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE 

Story Thinking and the Real-world Applications of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writing 

Helen Marshall, Kim Wilkins & Lisa Bennett

(Bloomsbury)