This is a list of historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2020.
Note: these awards were presented in the year in question.
| Award | Author |
|---|---|
| Mona Brand Award [65] | Kate Mulvany |
| Patrick White Award [66] | Gregory Day |
| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALS Gold Medal [67] | Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu | Cordite Press |
| Colin Roderick Award [68] | Sally Young | Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires | NewSouth Publishing |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year [69] | Favel Parrett | There Was Still Love | Hachette |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards [70] | Tara June Winch | The Yield | Penguin Random House |
| Stella Prize [71] | Jess Hill | See What You Made Me Do | Black Inc |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards [72] [73] | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking | Belvoir and Co-Curious |
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Children's Book of the Year Award [83] | Older Readers | Vikki Wakefield | This Is How We Change the Ending | Text Publishing |
| Younger Readers | Pip Harry | The Little Wave | University of Queensland Press | |
| Picture Book | Chris McKimmie | I Need a Parrot | Ford Street | |
| Early Childhood | Frances Watts | My Friend Fred | Allen & Unwin | |
| Eve Pownall Award for Information Books | Bruce Pascoe | Young Dark Emu: A truer history | Magabala Books | |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year [69] | Children's | Sami Bayly | The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals | Lothian |
| Young Adult | Wal Chim | The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling | Allen & Unwin | |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards [80] | Children's | Lian Tanner & Jonathan Bentley | Ella and the Ocean | Allen & Unwin |
| Young People's | Karen Foxlee | Lenny's Book of Everything | Allen & Unwin | |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards [72] [73] | Young Adult Fiction | Helena Fox | How It Feels to Float | Pan Macmillan Australia |
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barry Award [84] | Novel | Jane Harper | The Lost Man | Pan Macmillan |
| Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award [85] | Novel | Michael Robotham | Good Girl, Bad Girl | Hachette Australia |
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Davitt Award [86] | Novel | Meg Mundell | The Trespassers | University of Queensland Press |
| Young adult novel | Astrid Scholte | Four Dead Queens | Allen & Unwin | |
| Children's novel | Jenny Blackford | The Girl in the Mirror | Eagle Books | |
| True crime | Adele Ferguson | Banking Bad: Whistleblowers. Corporate cover-ups. One Journalist's Fight for the Truth | HarperCollins | |
| Debut novel | Susan Hurley | Eight Lives | Affirm Press | |
| Readers' choice | Dervla McTiernan | The Scholar | HarperCollins | |
| Emma Viskic | Darkness for Light | Echo Publishing | ||
| Ned Kelly Award [87] | Novel | Christian White | The Wife and the Widow | Affirm Press |
| First novel | Natalie Conyer | Present Tense | Clan Destine Press | |
| True crime | Dan Box | Bowraville | Viking Books | |
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ditmar Award [88] | Novel | Gillian Polack | The Year of the Fruit Cake | IFWG Publishing |
| Best Short Fiction | Rivqa Rafael | "Whom My Soul Loves" | ||
| Award | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature [74] | Natalie Harkin | Archival-Poetics | Vagabond Press |
| Anne Elder Award (joint winners) [89] | Cham Zhi Yi | blur by the | Subbed In |
| Gareth Sion Jenkins | Recipes for the Disaster | Five Islands Press | |
| Mary Gilmore Award [90] | Thom Sullivan | Carte Blanche | Vagabond Press |
| Prime Minister's Literary Awards [79] | Omar Sakr | The Lost Arabs | University of Queensland Press |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards [80] | Peter Boyle | Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness | Vagabond Press |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards [72] [73] | Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu | Cordite |
| Award | Category | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards [80] | Script | Kylie Boltin | Missing |
| Jacquelin Perske | The Cry , Episode 2 | ||
| Play | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking | |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards [72] | Drama | S. Shakthidharan, with Eamon Flack | Counting and Cracking |
| Award | Category | Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature [74] | Non-Fiction | Meredith Lake | The Bible in Australia | NewSouth |
| Indie Book Awards Book of the Year [69] | Non-Fiction | Archie Roach | Tell Me Why | Simon and Schuster Australia |
| Illustrated Non-Fiction | Paul Byrnes | The Lost Boys | Affirm Press | |
| National Biography Award [91] | Biography | Patrick Mullins | Tiberius with a Telephone: The life and stories of William McMahon | Scribe Publications |
| New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards [80] | Non-Fiction | Patrick Mullins | Tiberius with a Telephone: The Life and Stories of William McMahon | Scribe Publications |
| New South Wales Premier's History Awards | Australian History | James Dunk | Bedlam at Botany Bay | NewSouth Publishing [92] |
| Community and Regional History | Callum Clayton-Dixon | Surviving New England: A History of Aboriginal Resistance and Resilience Through the First Forty Years of Colonial Apocalypse | Nēwara Aboriginal Corporation [93] | |
| General History | Kate Fullagar | The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire | Yale University Press [94] | |
| Queensland Literary Awards [81] | Non-Fiction | Joe Gorman | Heartland: How Rugby League Explains Queensland | University of Queensland Press |
| Victorian Premier's Literary Awards [72] [73] | Non-Fiction | Christina Thompson | Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia | HarperCollins |