The shortlisted works in each category include:

Fiction

Women & Children (Tony Birch, UQP)

Anniversary (Stephanie Bishop, Hachette)

One Day We’re All Going to Die (Elise Hearst, HQ Fiction)

The Idealist (Nicholas Jose, Giramondo)

Stone Yard Devotional (Charlotte Wood, A&U)

But the Girl (Jessica Zhan Mei Yu, Hamish Hamilton)

Nonfiction

Bennelong & Phillip: A history unravelled (Kate Fullagar, Scribner)

Home Work: Essays on love and housekeeping (Helen Hayward, Puncher & Wattman)

Frank Moorhouse: Strange paths (Matthew Lamb, Knopf)

Life So Full of Promise: Further biographies of Australia’s lost generation (Ross McMullin, Scribe)

A Brilliant Life (Rachelle Unreich, Hachette)

Personal Score: Sport, culture, identity (Ellen van Neerven, UQP).

The judges for this year's prizes are bookseller Mark Rubbo, novelist and former publisher Louise Swinn (fiction), writer Simon Caterson, and historian Joy Damousi (nonfiction).

Age editor Patrick Elligett will reveal the winners at the Melbourne Writers Festival opening dinner on May 8, and each category winner will earn $10,000.

Last year, Robbie Arnott won the fiction award for Limberlost (Text), while Kim Mahood got the nonfiction category for Wandering with Intent (Scribe).