Tegan Bennett Daylight Wins the 2026 ASA Medal

Who won the 2026 ASA Medal? Australian writer, critic and teacher Tegan Bennett Daylight. The Australian Society of Authors announced her as this year's recipient on October 13, 2026, citing both her books and her work for other writers.

The medal goes each year to an Australian author or illustrator with a substantial body of work who has also made an outstanding contribution to Australian literary culture as an advocate. Daylight will formally accept it at the ASA's Colin Simpson Memorial Keynote in Sydney on November 10, 2026.

What the ASA said

Daylight writes novels for adults and young adults, short stories, criticism and non-fiction. The ASA notes that her work has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

The board framed the medal as recognition of two sides of the same career. She is, the ASA said, both one of Australia's most critically acclaimed writers and someone whose contribution to the wider writing community has been significant.

That community work gets as much space in the announcement as the books. Daylight has taught and mentored at the University of Technology, Western Sydney University and Varuna. The ASA calls her a critical first reader for many manuscripts and a champion of her peers — labour that, the society says, makes her exactly the kind of creator the medal is meant to honour.

ASA chief executive Lucy Hayward said Daylight is "a pillar in the writing community, through her literary accomplishments and her enduring commitment to mentoring emerging writers," and that the ASA was glad to recognise that contribution formally.

Daylight's response

On hearing the news, Daylight said most of her work happens behind the scenes, either alone at the desk or in the community, and that it was "just so lovely to have it recognised in this way." Seeing her name on a list that includes writers she has admired and friends she works alongside was, she said, "the highest honour I can think of." She also called the ASA "an organisation we can't live without."

The line about comrades matters. The announcement is not only a career highlight for one author; it is the society's way of saying that unpaid and half-visible literary labour still counts as part of a writing life.

About the medal

The ASA Medal has been awarded since 2003. Past recipients named in the announcement include Kirsty Murray, Ann James, Helen Garner, Bruce Pascoe, Thomas Keneally, Nadia Wheatley, Valerie Parv, Tim Winton and Anita Heiss.

Each medal is handcrafted in sterling silver by Yuwaalaraay-Gamilaraay artist Melissa Stannard. The design draws on estuarine mangrove river systems, where fresh and salt water meet, which the ASA says stands for the supportive work medal recipients do for the next generation of writers. The society thanks Stannard for the design in the same post.

Why it matters for authors

Advocacy counts as literary work. The ASA Medal is not a book prize. It is explicitly for a body of work plus advocacy. Daylight's citation leans as hard on teaching, mentoring and first-reading as it does on her own titles. That is a useful reminder for writers whose public CV is thin because so much of their year goes into other people's pages.

National writers' organisations still set the calendar. A November keynote in Sydney is where this honour will be handed over. For Australian authors, the ASA remains one of the few bodies that can put public weight behind community labour that usually stays invisible.

Keep the paper trail of the work you do for other writers. Mentoring notes, workshop records and the manuscripts you help along rarely show up on a royalty statement. They are exactly what citations like this describe. If a society, festival or guild ever asks what you have given back, a dated folder beats a vague memory.

Read the criteria before you chase the wrong prize. Book prizes and advocacy medals measure different things. Daylight's announcement is a clean example of the second kind: craft on the page, and a record of showing up for other writers.

Sources

• Australian Society of Authors: Tegan Bennett Daylight awarded 2026 ASA Medal (October 13, 2026)