Olivia De Zilva won the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction with Plastic Budgie, her debut novel about family, memory and growing up in Adelaide. Fifteen booksellers selected the winner from six shortlisted works. The prize brings 5,000 Australian dollars to a writer whose other books include Eggshell and the poetry collection Sick Note.
Olivia De Zilva won the 2026 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction with Plastic Budgie. Readings, an Australian bookseller, announced the result on October 27. A panel of 15 staff members of different ages chose the winner from a six-book shortlist, with Gene Pinter chairing the panel. The award supports debut and emerging Australian writers. Its twelfth winner receives 5,000 Australian dollars.[1], [2]
Plastic Budgie begins in a hospital on Kaurna Country in Adelaide, with a narrator named Olivia who remembers her birth. Childhood recollections give way to a fragmented narrative. Pinter highlighted memory, inheritance, selfhood and storytelling, comparing the book with Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice. Those comparisons are the judge’s literary assessment. Other shortlisted authors included Hossein Asgari, Romy Ash, Rhett Davis, Zeynab Gamieldien and Wayne Marshall.[1]
De Zilva described the book as a deconstructed life story, connecting its fragments with wholeness in a family and the experience of chronic illness. Writing also let her return to a grandfather to whom she had been unable to say goodbye. Her other works include Eggshell and the poetry collection Sick Note. She also works as an educator and consultant with schools in South Australia and New South Wales.[1]
