Daisy Utemorrah Award Shortlist Announced for 2025
Tue, Jul 01, 2025
In partnership with the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, Magabala Books are overjoyed to announce the 2025 Daisy Utemorrah Award shortlist:
“Noble Intentions” - Krista Dunstan
Taken from her home by Daniel Chanton, a boy from high school that she hardly knows, Amber is thrown into the aftermath of a world war and the pulse of the next wave of revolution. Set in a parallel timeline, in a world connected to and yet wholly separate from the one she knows, Amber has to try to work out who she is and decide whether to take on the leadership role she has been given as the last surviving member of the royal family.
Krista Dunstan is a proud Noongar woman and aspiring writer raised in Esperance, Western Australia and living in Boorloo (Perth). Krista is a mother of two and a human rights advocate who has dedicated her career to shaping the policies and practices that influence our communities across the legal, government and corporate sectors. Krista strongly believes that our modern Australian community must be built upon the proper respect for First Nations peoples and the full acknowledgment of Australia’s history, in all of its light and darkness. Having spent her childhood exploring the stunning local bush and coast line, Krista wanted to share it’s beauty with the rest of Australia. Krista's first book, Noble Intentions, is set alongside her hometown in the magical southwest and starts to explore the importance of family in shaping both our identity and our future.
“The Takeback Heist” - Jannali Jones
When Nala becomes aware that a family heirloom is part of an upcoming auction, she wastes no time trying to buy it back. But it turns out colonial price tags are higher than she expects. Instead, she and her friends come up with a crazy idea – they’ll just steal it back. After all, it’s not stealing if it’s yours, right?
Jannali Jones is a Gunai writer and editor. Her debut novel, My Father’s Shadow was published by Magabala Books. Recently she was awarded the 2024-25 First Nations fellowship with Brink Productions, was part of the editorial team on the literary journal Splinter and wrote and produced the award-winning play, Trail’s End, as part of the 2024 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Her work has been published in Australia and overseas, including both fiction and non-fiction, spanning across genres and forms. She completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.
“Jax Paperweight and the Neon Starway” - Beau Windon
JAX PAPERWEIGHT AND THE NEON STARWAY is a Middle Grade comedic fantasy novel that follows Bailey Wailson, a neurodivergent Koori with more anxiety than a primary school assembly hall holding their first ever school dance. When his school crush, Aline, is accidentally kidnapped during a mistaken kerfuffle, Bailey must team up with a suspicious rogue by the name of Jax Paperweight and traverse a mystical version of so-called Australia to bring her home.
Beau Windon is a neurodivergent writer of Wiradjuri heritage who flirts with all genres of creative writing. He was shortlisted in three categories for the 2022 Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards: winning the Self-Told Stories by Writers Living with Disability category and coming runner-up in Indigenous Life Stories. In 2023, Beau was a winner of Griffith Review’s Emerging Voices competition and in 2024 he was a finalist for the Writers Prize in the Melbourne Prize for Literature. When not writing, he likes long dramatic walks where he imagines he's the lead character in a film with indie music playing behind him. You can read his work at www.beauwindon.com
Congratulations to the talented group of First Nations writers from across the country.
The Daisy Utemorrah Award is for unpublished junior and Young Adult writing, which supports and seeks to grow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation in the young adult literary landscape. Launched as part of the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, this national award is open to Australian Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writers of junior and YA fiction.
The three manuscripts were selected from an impressive pool of entries from First Nations authors at varying stages of their writing careers, ranging from emerging writers to established. Judges were impressed by the strength and diversity of entries.
See the entire Western Australian Premier's Book Award shortlist here.
The winner of the Daisy Utemorrah Award will be announced in late August at the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards at the State Library of Western Australia and online. The winner will receive $15,000 of prize money and a publishing contract with Magabala Books.
The Daisy Utemorrah Award honours the late Daisy Utemorrah, an Elder from the Wunambal people of the Mitchell Plateau in the far north Kimberley region. She was a founding Elder of Magabala Books, as well as an award-winning poet, author, community leader and passionate educator.
The Daisy Utemorrah Award is generously supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund and the State Government of Western of Australia.
