Introducing the
ARA Readers’ Choice Award
The HNSA is delighted to introduce our inaugural ARA Readers’ Choice Award to give our HNSA newsletter subscribers an opportunity to vote for their favourite novel longlisted in the ARA Historical Novel Prize Adult Category. ARA Group is generously offering prize money of $5,000 to the winning author.
Voters will automatically go into the draw to win one of two book bundles of the 9 longlisted novels together with a complimentary online weekend ticket to the History Unbound Festival on 1-2 November, 2025 (valued at $330). The ticket also provides on-demand access to all festival sessions for 3 months post the event.
HNSA subscribers enjoy weekly newsletters packed with other giveaway opportunities, Imagining the Past podcasts, and updates about our festival, workshop program, and other news.
See our Longlist and learn ‘how to enter’ below
2025 ARA Prize Longlist:
Dusk by Robbie Arnott
(Picador Australia, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia)
Everything Lost, Everything Found by Matthew Hooton
(Harper Collins Publishers)
All the Bees in the Hollows by Lauren Keegan
(Affirm Press, a Simon & Schuster Australia company)
The First Friend by Malcolm Knox
(Allen & Unwin)
Rapture by Emily Maguire
(Allen & Unwin)
One Hundred Years of Betty by Debra Oswald
(Allen & Unwin)
When Sleeping Women Wake by Emma Pei Yin
(Hachette Australia)
I am Nannertgarrook by Tasma Walton
(Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia)
How to Enter ARA Prize Reader’s Choice:
How to vote for your favourite book and enter the giveaway:
Ensure you are subscribed to the HNSA newsletter.
Vote for your favourite book via link below. You may only vote once. Two winners will be drawn via Random.org
Contest ends at 1 October at 12pm AEST.
Winners of the giveaway will be announced on 8 October 2025. The contest is limited to Australian and New Zealand readers only.
The winner of the ARA Readers’ Choice Award will be announced at our award ceremony on 16 October in Sydney.
Terms & Conditions
Only subscribers to the HNSA newsletter are eligible to enter the contest.
Only one vote is allowed per subscriber.
Only subscribers located in Australia and New Zealand are eligible to enter
Entries close on 1 October at 12pm AEST
Two giveaway winners will be chosen by HNSA using Random.org with the results announced on 8 October 2025.
HNSA will check the name and email address specified in an entry is registered to a subscriber in HNSA’s Mailerlite database.
HNSA reserves the right to disqualify an entry if it is ascertained an entrant has submitted multiple entries using different email addresses.
Giveaway prizes: Each of the two winners will win a book bundle of 9 longlisted titles plus one complimentary online ticket (valued at $330) to the History Unbound Festival to be held on 1-2 November 2025.
About ARA Group
The ARA Historical Novel Prize has been made possible by the generosity of our Foundation Partner, ARA Group, which is committed to supporting the arts and literature. They do this in a number of ways – as a Principal Partner of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, the Monkey Baa Theatre, and the Story Factory– and now as the sponsor of this very significant literary prize.
Looking for more?
Prize Entry Rules
Meet the 2025 Judges
View past winners
