Dominic Amerena’s ‘I Want Everything’ longlisted for 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award

The longlist for the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced, including Dominic Amerena’s ‘I Want Everything’ (Summit Books, 2025).

‘Words fail to describe how thrilled and honoured I am to be on this list. Since I knew I wanted to be a writer, the Miles Franklin was always for me, the most prized of prizes. This does not feel remotely real,’ said Amarena.

I Want Everything follows a young writer who stumbles across Brenda Shales, Australia's most famous literary disappearing act, and decides to do whatever it takes to get her story. The only catch is nothing about the way he gets it is honest. As Brenda's past unravels, so does his certainty about who is really pulling the strings. Amarena’s sharp debut novel explores ambition, deception, and what we are willing to steal to get what we want.

a4 Literary agent Grace Heifetz says, ‘From the first pages of the draft of this fantastic novel I was convinced it was the work of a blazingly original genius, and I’m delighted the judges of the Miles Franklin Award have recognised that same quality.’

The 11 other shortlisted titles are Discipline (Randa Abdel-Fattah, University of Queensland Press; Salt Upon the Water (Lyn Dickens, Wakefield Press); Tenderfoot (Toni Jordan, Hachette); First Name Second Name (Steve MinOn, University of Queensland Press); My Heart at Evening (Konrad Muller, Evercreech Editions), Fierceland (Omar Musa, Penguin Random House Australia); Little World (Josephine Rowe, Black Inc.); Elegy, Southwest (Madeleine Watts, Ultimo Press) and You Must Remember This (Sean Wilson, Affirm Press).

This year’s judges are Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of NSW, as chair, and literary scholars Jumana Bayeh, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth and Maggie Nolan.

According to the judging panel, “Destabilised histories, faltering memories and chequered geographies meet in the pages of the 2026 Miles Franklin longlist. From Far North Queensland to Tasmania and all the way to remote Western Australia, these novels remind us of the vastness of this continent, the many times and places that Australian stories inhabit, and the global networks in which ‘Australian life’ is invariably embedded. This year’s longlist is haunted by ancestral inheritances, the human capacity for self-deception, and the ways we make space for grief. These novels hold up mirrors to little worlds and large ones too.”

This year’s shortlist will be announced in June, with the winner announcement to follow in August.

The 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner was Siang Lu for his novel Ghost Cities (University of Queensland Press).

 More information about the award is available on award trustee Perpetual Limited’s website.