2026 Winner

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, Gunk is an electrifying debut novel exploring love and desire, safety and destruction, chaos and control – and family in all its forms.

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, A Splintering is a masterful evocation of a woman desperate to escape the class she came from, steeped in the turbulence and division of modern Pakistan.

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, When the Cranes Fly South is a beautifully bittersweet novel about an ageing man desperate to mend his relationship with his son before it's too late.

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, The Grapevine is a wire-taut thriller set across a sweltering 1970s Australian summer, combining page-turning whodunnit with piercing exploration of the hidden lives of women, as a community is rocked by a brutal murder.

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, The Original explores issues of art and authenticity with fierce intelligence and page-turning style, following an unusually perceptive child swept up in an intriguing case of disputed identity.

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, Consider Yourself Kissed intermingles the personal and the public with originality and wit, tracing the complex path of a relationship across a decade characterised by momentous upheaval.

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, Disappoint Me is an engrossing, heartfelt story of love, loss and the challenges of being true to yourself, as a poet-cum-legal councellor trans woman decides to take a stab at heteronormativity.

Shortlisted for the 2026 Nota Bene Prize, Confessions is a striking debut that follows a teenager orphaned by the 9/11 attack as she comes in contact with her estranged family in small town Ireland.