2003 in Australian literature

Updated on Apr 25, 2026

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This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2003.

Events

Peter Carey and Joan London join the list of authors who have withdrawn from contention for the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize. In 2002 Richard Flanagan and Tim Winton also declined to have their books nominated for the prize in protest at the involvement of Forestry Tasmania as a sponsor of the Ten Days on the Island festival at which the award winner is to be announced.

Members of The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) voted in their Society's 40th anniversary poll to select Australia's favourite book. Tim Winton's Cloudstreet headed the poll followed by The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead and The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson.

Nevil Shute's 1950 novel, A Town Like Alice was included in a BBC-sponsored UK survey of 100 popular novels, but has failed to make a similar Australian list.

Literary fiction

Alan Atwood – Burke's Soldier

Peter Carey – My Life as a Fake

Brian Castro – Shanghai Dancing

J. M. Coetzee – Elizabeth Costello

Julian Davies – The Boy

Nikki Gemmell – The Bride Stripped Bare

Peter Goldsworthy – Three Dog Night

Shirley Hazzard – The Great Fire

Kathryn Heyman – The Accomplice

Janette Turner Hospital – Due Preparations for the Plague

M. J. Hyland – How the Light Gets In

Annamarie Jagose – Slow Water

Nada A. Jarrar – Somewhere, Home

Tom Keneally – The Tyrant's Novel

Kathy Lette – Dead Sexy

Colleen McCullough – The Touch

Elliot Perlman – Seven Types of Ambiguity

D. B. C. Pierre – Vernon God Little

Patricia Shaw – The Five Winds

Sue Woolfe – The Secret Cure

Children's and Young Adult fiction

Pamela Allen – Cuthbert's Babies

Paul Collins – The Earthborn

Kate Constable – The Waterless Sea

Marianne Curley – The Dark

Justin D'Ath – Shaedow Master

Garry Disher – Eva's Angel

John Heffernan – GBH

Melina Marchetta – Saving Francesca

David Metzenthen – Boys of Blood and Bone

Jaclyn Moriarty – Finding Cassie Crazy

Garth Nix

Abhorsen

Mister Monday

Janeen Webb – The Silken Road to Samarkand

Crime

Kirsty Brooks – The Vodka Dialogue

Ian Callinan – Appointment at Amalfi

Jon Cleary – Degrees of Connection

Peter Corris – Master's Mates

Michelle de Kretser – The Hamilton Case

Garry Disher – Kittyhawk Down

Kerry Greenwood – The Castlemaine Murders: A Phryne Fisher Mystery

Wayne Grogan – Junkie Pilgrim

Gabrielle Lord – Lethal Factor

Barry Maitland – The Verge Practice

Matthew Reilly – Scarecrow

Gregory David Roberts – Shantaram

Michael Robotham – The Suspect

Steve J. Spears – Murder at the Fortnight

Peter Temple – White Dog

Lee Tulloch – The Cutting: A Nullin Mystery

Robin Wallace-Crabbe – The Forger

Romance

Ally Blake – The Wedding Wish

Lucy Clark – Englishman at Dingo Creek

Barbara Hannay – A Wedding at Windaroo

Stephanie Laurens – A Gentleman's Honor

Di Morrissey – Barra Creek

Candice R. Proctor – Beyond Sunrise

Meredith Webber – Outback Encounter

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Max Barry – Jennifer Government

K. A. Bedford – Orbital Burn

K. J. Bishop – The Etched City

Russell Blackford – An Evil Hour

Trudi Canavan – The High Lord

Cecilia Dart-Thornton – The Battle of Evernight

Sara Douglass – God's Concubine

Jennifer Fallon

Eye of the Labyrinth

Lord of the Shadows

Lian Hearn – Grass for His Pillow

Ian Irvine – Terminator Gene

Victor Kelleher – Born of the Sea

Glenda Larke – The Aware

Fiona McIntosh – Myrren's Gift

Anthony O'Neill – The Lamplighter

Kate Orman – Blue Box

Tony Shillitoe – Freedom

Kim Wilkins – The Autumn Castle

Sean Williams and Shane Dix – Heirs of Earth

Drama

Mireille Juchau – White Gifts

Hannie Rayson – Inheritance

Henri Szeps – One Life, Two Journeys

David Williamson – Birthrights

Poetry

Judith Beveridge – Wolf Notes

Laurie Duggan – Mangroves

Stephen Edgar – Lost in the Foreground

Clive James – The Book of My Enemy : Collected Verse, 1958-2003

John Kinsella – Peripheral Light

Non-fiction

Fiona Capp – That Oceanic Feeling

Inga Clendinnen – Dancing with Strangers

Patricia Crawford and Ian Crawford – Contested Country: A History of the Northcliffe Area

David Hollinsworth – They Took the Children

Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark – The History Wars

Peter Robb – A Death in Brazil

Biographies

Graeme Blundell – King: The Life and Comedy of Graham Kennedy

Lorraine Day – Gordon of Dingley Dell: The Life of Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–1870): Poet and Horseman

Edward Duyker – Citizen Labillardiere: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834)

Greg Growden – The Snowy Baker Story

Barry Hill – Broken Song: T.G.H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession

Tom Keneally – Abraham Lincoln

Jonathan King – Gallipoli: Our Last Man Standing : The Extraordinary Life of Alec Campbell

Gary Linell – Playing God: The Rise and Fall of Gary Ablett

Peter Singer – Pushing Time Away : My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna

Nicholas Thomas – Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook

Anne Whitehead – Bluestocking in Patagonia

Awards and honours

Note: these awards were presented in the year in question.

Deaths

16 March – Susan McGowan, poet (born 1907)

18 March – Julie Lewis, short story writer (born 1925)

30 March – Nick Enright, playwright and screenwriter (born 1950)

2 April – Joan Phipson, writer for children and young adults (born 1912)

20 April – Bill Wannan, editor (born 1915)

1 May – Stephen Estaban Kelen, dramatist (born 1912)

28 June – C.B. Christesen, poet and founding editor of Meanjin (born 1911)

23 November – Hesba Brinsmead, writer for children (born 1922)

References

2003 in Australian literature Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

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