Penquin Literary Prize 2025
Penguin Random House Australia is thrilled to announce Touch Grass by Mary Colussi as the winner of the Penguin Literary Prize 2025.
In 2017, the Penguin Literary Prize was established to discover, nurture and develop literary fiction writers, providing a platform for new and diverse voices to emerge.
Offering aspiring authors the chance to become a part of the Penguin Random House (PRH) community, the winner of the Penguin Literary Prize receives $20,000 and the opportunity to publish with PRH, home to over 80 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors. As one of the most prestigious prizes for an unpublished manuscript in the Australian publishing industry, the Penguin Literary Prize also has an amazing legacy of fostering some of our country’s best and brightest voices.
This year’s winner, Mary Colussi, is no exception; her manuscript Touch Grass showcases the exceptional quality recognised by this award.
Mary’s manuscript, Touch Grass tells the story of a depressed deletion specialist as she starts to leave her body at unexpected moments and finds herself at the surreal centre of a global panic.