Co-written by award-winning author Nicolas Rothwell and acclaimed artist Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, Yilkari: A Desert Suite explores what happens when European sensibility meets an Indigenous understanding of time, space and place. Emma Sloley’s The Island of Last Things features a pair of zookeepers who come together under extreme circumstances and must risk everything for the promise of a better world. Jeffrey Buchanan’s 2024 Michael Gifkins Prize-winning The Birds Began to Sing is a funny and tender queer coming-of-age story. For middle grade readers, Caroline Stills’ A Gift from the Birds—the final book to win the Text Prize—is a heartfelt story about loss and grief, and finding comfort in unexpected places.