Indie Book Awards – quick links
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy has been announced as the winner of the Indie Book Awards 2026 Book of the Year.
The annual Book of the Year Award is voted by independent booksellers across Australia from the six Award category winners. Bookseller judge Leisa Morton from Paperbark Merchants Albany (WA) said:
‘Wild Dark Shore was transportive. This is the perfect blend of literary fiction and thriller; filled with stunning lines exploring the emotions of the characters and philosophical thought about the future of humanity, paced expertly and threaded through with breath-catching tension.
A truly remarkable novel takes something from the reader, and it nestles inside of them in return, and Wild Dark Shore has done this for me.’
On winning the Award, Charlotte McConaghy said: ‘I want to take this moment to express my profound gratitude. You (Independent booksellers) are a fundamental, crucial part of our arts industry, of our cultural identities, of the way we connect to ideas and stories, and to each other.’
A spokesperson for McConaghy’s publisher, Penguin Australia, said: ‘It is a testament to the passion and support of our exceptional independent booksellers that Charlotte McConaghy’s WIld Dark Shore has found the readership that it has. Readers, authors and publishers owe the Indies so much.’
The Awards, say its organisers, ‘recognise and celebrate indie booksellers as the number one supporters of Australian authors. What makes indie booksellers uniquely placed to judge and recommend the best Aussie books of the past year, is their incredible passion and knowledge, their contribution to the cultural diversity of the Australian reading public, by recommending beyond the big brands, and above all, their love of quality writing’.
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The individual category winners in Fiction, Debut Fiction, Non-Fiction, Illustrated Non-Fiction, Children’s and Young Adult were also announced. From these six category winners, the independent booksellers selected the best of the best – The 2026 Indie Book of the Year.
Past Book of the Year winners have gone on to be bestsellers and win other major literary awards. Previous winners include: Dusk by Robbie Arnott; Killing for Country: A Family Story by David Marr; Love Stories by Trent Dalton; The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams; There Was Still Love by Favel Parrett; Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton; Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend; The Dry by Jane Harper; The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood; The Bush by Don Watson; The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan; The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman; All That I Am by Anna Funder; The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do; and Breath by Tim Winton.
Indie Book Awards 2026 winners:
Indie Book Awards: Book of the Year
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Penguin Australia).
Indie Book Awards: Fiction
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Penguin Australia).
Indie Book Awards: Non-fiction
Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent (Picador Australia).
Indie Book Awards: Debut Fiction
When Sleeping Women Wake by Emma Pei Yin (Hachette Australia).
Indie Book Awards: Illustrated Non-fiction
Wild by Design by Tim Pilgrim (Murdoch Books).
Indie Book Awards: Children’s
Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend (Lothian Children’s Books).
Indie Book Awards: Young Adult
Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire by Amy Doak (Penguin Australia).
