Liminal wins at the NSW Literary Awards!
Liminal’s founding editor Leah Jing McIntosh, pictured with poet and Liminal Festival producer Hasib Hourani, recipient of the 2025 Kenneth Slessor Award
Liminal wins the 2025 Special Award at the NSW Literary Awards
In May 2025, Liminal was awarded the NSW Literary Awards Special Award.The NSW Literary Awards are the richest and longest running state-based literary awards in Australia and cover all genres of writing. In exceptional circumstances, a Special Award ($10,000) is offered to an Australian literary work that is not readily covered by the existing Awards categories. Previous winners of the Special Award include Ruby Langford Ginibi, Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian, Gerald Murnane, Thomas Shapcott, Christina Stead, Judith Wright, and more.
Reason for Recommendation
Liminal was started in 2016, as an interview series with Asian Australian artists, documenting their practice and the profound impact their work has had on Australian cultural life. By its own count, Liminal has now published more than 200 of these interviews, including with writers such as Michelle de Kretser, Jessica Au and André Dao. But Liminal has also spread far beyond this interview series, becoming a prolific publisher — putting out 14 series of art and writing, and two books — and supporting Australian writing through the creation of a writing fellowship, two writing prizes, a literary festival and a podcast. The project also prides itself on keeping its events free and accessible.
The success of Liminal has been achieved against the odds. Australia is a small market, where new publishers, and publications, struggle to find a foothold or audience. This means there are fewer and fewer places for writers to hone their craft, to experiment, to establish themselves — all of which risks the stagnation of Australian writing. In all of the work that it does, Liminal pushes against this. Liminal is the kind of ambitious, strategic literary project that makes a real difference to the health of literary life in Australia, not only now but also into the future.
Liminal was selected as the Special Award recipient by the 2025 Judging Panel for its contribution to the literary life of Australia. Read more about the Special Award here.