The Australian Universities Heads of English (AUHE) is calling for nominations for the 2026 AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship, which will be awarded to the best single authored or co-authored monographs of literary scholarship published in the last two years. All forms of literary scholarship are acceptable, including critical, theoretical, empirical, historical, textual and so on. Interdisciplinary scholarship is not precluded though a work must engage with what is understood as books and writing in whatever form.
Nominated books need to have been published between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2026.
The prize is decided by a panel of members nominated by the AUHE executive. This year the panel members are: Ann Vickery, Margaret Henderson, and Dashiell Moore. The winner will be announced at the time of the AUHE AGM, usually in late November or early December.
Please forward all nominations to the Chair of the judging panel, Ann Vickery (ann.vickery@deakin.edu.au) by 5pm, 24 July 2026. Nominators should supply or ensure access to three copies of the nominated text. Either hard or electronic copies are acceptable, with electronic copies preferred. Authors may self-nominate. If nominating a book you have not authored, please contact the author of the text you are nominating to avoid duplicate entries. Publishers may also nominate books.
For any queries, please email the Chair of the judging panel. The AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship now operates on an alternating cycle. The prize in 2026 is open to monographs; in 2027 the prize will be open to edited collections, scholarly editions, and all other non-monograph book-length works.
AUHE 