From big emotions to whimsy, heart-wrenching moments to ordinary tales, The Furphy Anthology 2025 gathers the makings of a distinctly Australian voice.
The anthology collects the winners and shortlisted writers from this year’s Furphy Literary Award. It arrives with an inviting, textured cover designed by Josh Durham of Design by Committee, hinting at stories both rugged and refined, edited together by a hand that knows when to push and when to pull back.
The Furphy Anthology review – quick links
Furphy Literary Award winners
Now in its sixth year, the collection brings together fifteen authors with a broad range of experience to illuminate everyday Australian stories.
This year, these authors were chosen from a pool of 788 entries and the cohort of emerging writers promises a new wave within the Furphy canon.
The collection opens with Serena Moss’ winning piece, The Eulogy Business. Moss sets a confident tone and establishes her literary prowess from the outset, offering a glimpse into a Lebanese family and community at a moment of grief.
What begins as a lighthearted recollection soon cracks open a soft healing spot and spirals upwards into a journey towards self awareness. The conclusion not only grants permission but also provides immense release through the power of words.
In second place is Charlotte Askew’s Somewhere Above the Artesian. Askew takes the reader to the edge of understanding, balancing on the brink of what’s known and what’s left hidden. Robbo, the protagonist, becomes the focal point of unspoken pain. With everyday Australian cadence and restrained language, the depth of the narrative expands as the mystery presses toward the surface.
Placing third is Amy L Montague’s All the Moments I Still Live In. Here, Montague navigates the murky terrain of memory with a careful, uneasy grace that lingers with the reader. The story crafts a vivid internal landscape that prompts questions around trauma, memory and relational dynamics.
Showcasing the breadth of emerging Australian writing
The anthology balances moments of humour with weightier reflections on memory, grief and resilience. Characters are drawn with everyday realism – people you might pass on the street – yet their inner lives reveal surprising depths.
The writing often shifts between intimate close ups and broader communal settings, underscoring the anthology’s celebration of Australian life in all its aspects.
The collection features standout pieces alongside gentler, ordinary moments, collectively illustrating the breadth of contemporary Australian storytelling.
Titles such as The Grim Gripper, Muggy Mouth and Tendency To Sunburn promise a mix of warmth and bite, while others lean into suspense and psychological nuance.
Tina Huang’s Waiting reframes the mundane life of suburbia as a canvas for reflection about mental health. Huang invites readers to follow Wang and Xin Ya on an obligatory visit with each other, revealing an intriguing, suspenseful tale about a challenging mother-daughter relationship.
In Turkey Dinner, Darren Bell probes how tradition shapes behaviour, using subtle humour to dramatise the lengths people go to uphold Christmas rituals.
Accompanying each story is a delicate, restrained but effective illustration that encapsulates the depth and essence of the unfolding tale.
Closing with questions
As the closing piece, and one of the longest, Melanie Wild’s Those Who Stayed is set in Fitzgerald, a communal town unmoored by the looming cyclone and its aftermath, where collective rebuilding mirrors the protaganist’s equally unsettled interior life.
Wild artfully resists echoing the protagonist’s stated fatigue – “no trepidation…just the dull ache of boredom lingering in [my] bones” – and instead guiding readers into a darker undercurrent just beneath the surface.
It’s a story of contradictory longing, where a desire for something beyond familiar everyday life collides with an obsessive need to understand the reason for the death of the town’s beloved superstar. The fixation drives an exploration of hidden histories, rumours and half-remembered truths, exposing how communal myths can both distort memory and shape identity.
Structurally, The Furphy Anthology 2025 follows a loose, generous arc. There are standouts that carry the book towards fresh directions, along with quieter pieces that function as ballast, giving the collection its emotional density.
For many writers, characterisation is a particular strength. Some entries are clearly more plot-driven; others feel like imperfect memories, or fragments from a familiar quilt.
The anthology feels Australian, and yet many of the themes travel beyond borders. There is often a sense of landscape acting almost as a character. The land absorbs memory, the wind carries rumour and the horizon both reveals and conceals.
The Furphy Anthology 2025 speaks to the Furphy Literary Award’s mission to give ‘a fair go’ to Australian voices, and to celebrate the texture of ordinary lives through stories told with clarity, empathy and craft. For readers who relish the feel of Australian storytelling – its landscapes, its communities and its unassuming heroism – this collection offers a rich, transportive journey across the country’s emotional terrain.
The anthology plants moments of genuine warmth and humanity while acknowledging that stories are not just weapons but also ports of call – places where communities gather to tell truths they can tolerate.
