David Brooks won the 2025 Patrick White Literary Award, honoring an author who has "made an ongoing contribution to Australian literature but may not have received adequate recognition," Books+Publishing reported. Established by Patrick White with the proceeds from his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award is worth A$20,000 (about US$13,175).
Born in 1953 in Canberra, Brooks spent his childhood in Greece and Yugoslavia before returning to Australia. He is the author of six poetry collections, four novels, four volumes of short stories, and four works of nonfiction "that explore the ethical and emotional dimensions of the human–animal relationship," Books+Publishing noted.
According to award trustee Perpetual, the prize honors "a richly deserved recognition of [Brooks's] profound and wide-ranging contributions to Australian literature, contemporary poetry, and environmental thought."
The judging committee said: "Brooks's contributions to Australian literature have been profound, but perhaps because his oeuvre has been spread across so many different forms and genres--each with its own audience--his output has not always been readily appreciated in its totality. The Patrick White Literary Award is a hugely deserving recognition of David Brooks as an outstanding Australian writer, thinker, scholar, educator who has had a major influence on contemporary poetry and environmental thought. The judges hope that recognizing Brooks's work with this honor will encourage more readers and writers to his stellar body of work, and thank him for his gifts to Australian writing."