Australian Jewish Writer Awards winners announced

The winners of the 2026 Shalom Collective Australian Jewish Writer Awards were announced on August 3 at the opening night of the Festival of the Spoken Word, presented by Sydney Jewish Writers Festival.

Now in its third year, the awards recognise the best Australian writing on Jewish subjects published in 2025, with prizes distributed across five categories spanning non-fiction, fiction, poetry, playwriting and young writers.

John M. Efron took out the Leslie and Sophie Caplan Award for Jewish Non-Fiction for All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat, published by Stanford University Press.

The book traces the intertwined histories of German Jews and Germany through the lens of meat over nearly 1000 years. Judges praised the work for integrating a wide variety of sources, highlighting deep themes in Jewish history with contemporary resonance, and remaining accessible despite its scholarly rigour.

Katia Ariel’s Ferryman: The life and deathwork of Ephraim Finch was highly commended in the category. Also shortlisted were Ittay Flescher for The holy and the broken: A cry for Israeli-Palestinian peace from a land that must be shared and Lee Kofman and Tamar Paluch for their edited collection Ruptured: Jewish Women in Australia Reflect on Life Post-October 7.

Poet and visual artist Anna Jacobson won the Bobby Adler Award for Young Jewish Writers for her collection All Rage Blaze Light, published by Upswell Publishing. Jacobson is a two-time winner of the award, having also won in 2024 for Anxious in a Sweet Store.

Judges described her latest collection, which blends poetry and visual art, as formally adventurous yet emotionally immediate, noting it illuminated “the complex work of healing, finding moments of beauty and agency amid uncertainty”.

Ziggy Enoch won the Edith Hausmann Award for Jewish Playwrights for Sabotage. The award is open to full-length unproduced plays by Jewish Australian writers aged 18 to 45. Judges said the play combined a witty lens on family history with expressionistic, comedic theatrical depictions, creating a work that was “enveloping, while being acutely contemporary”.

Merav Fima’s Late Blossoms, published by Vine Leaves Press, won the Szymon (Simon) Klitenik Award for Jewish Fiction. The interwoven short stories centre on the lives of migrant women in early to mid-20th-century Jerusalem, gathering at a literary salon hosted by painter Anna Ticho and her husband.

The Chaya Fedler Award for Poetry went to Gadia Zrihan for Koldre. The poem traces the journey of a koldre (Yiddish for duvet or comforter) from Warsaw to Tel Aviv to Australia, telling a story of displacement, exile and ancestral survival.

Australian Jewish Writer Awards program manager Sydney Aaranson said the shortlists captured a snapshot of Jewish writing in Australia, from memoir and history to fiction and poetry.

“It takes courage to put work out into the world, particularly at a time when it is challenging to tell Jewish stories. But there’s real value in it – seeing our own culture and our own lives reflected in a book or on a stage is deeply moving and strengthens our community,” Aaranson said.

“Thanks to our donors, we’ve expanded the awards this year and can offer even more Australian Jewish writers the recognition their work deserves.”

The awards are run by Shalom Collective, a Sydney-based nonprofit, with funding partner JCA.