2026 ARA Readers’ Choice Award
The ARA Readers’ Choice Award allows our HNSA newsletter subscribers to vote for their favourite novel longlisted in the 2026 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 signed book bundles of the 9 longlisted novels.
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
2026 ARA Prize Longlist:
Bernice Barry - The Names of a Hare (Fremantle Press)
Jeffery Buchanan - The Birds Began to Sing (Text Publishing)
Lauren Keegan - The Woman in the Seal Skin (Simon & Schuster Australia)
Lauren Keenan - The Other Catherine (Penguin Random House NZ)
Wayne Marshall - Henry Goes Bush (Picador Australia)
Fiona Kelly McGregor - The Trap (Picador Australia)
Heather Rose - A Great Act of Love (Allen & Unwin)
Allison Rushby - Slashed Beauties (HQ, a division of HarperCollins)
Francesca de Tores - Cast Away (Bloomsbury Publishing)
How to Enter ARA Prize Readers’ Choice Award:
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 2026. 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 2026.
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.
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 Judges
View past winners
