Helen Garner in Australia, top center, is told the news of her Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction during the London ceremony on November 4. Image: Baillie Gifford Prize
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
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‘How To End a Story: Collected Diaries’
Of all the key book and publishing awards to issue news during the run-up to Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 15 to 19), the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction is among the most consequential.
At £50,000 (US$65,133 ) for its winner, this is among the best-paying of the socially relevant nonfiction award regimes, and the Baillie Gifford’s jurors’ usual sense for culturally accessible work—seriously meaningful, readable, and timely writings—can at times reflect that of Canada’s US$75,000 Cundill History Prize.
In addition to the winner’s purse, there’s £5,000 (US$6,714) for each of the other five shortlistees, putting the total prize money for this award at £75,000 (US$100,710).
And the winner of the 2025 edition of the Baillie Gifford has gone to one of the most requently lauded Australian writers—already a recipient of the 2023 Australian Society of Authors Medal, 2019 Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature; the Stateside and much-coveted 2016 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize; and the 2006 inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature.
Her How To End a Story: Collected Diaries is, in fact, the first Baillie Gifford to go to a work of diaries, memoir if you will, and is a volume of Garner’s own entries, from the early stages of her career in bohemian Melbourne, publishing her debut novel while raising a young daughter in the 1970s; the throes of an all-consuming love affair in the 1980s; and clinging to a disintegrating marriage in the 1990s.
“Told with devastating honesty, steel-sharp wit and an ecstatic attention to the details of everyday life, this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize-winning book reveals the inner life of a woman in love, a mother, a friend and a formidable writer at work,” according to organizers of the Baillie Gifford.
Robbie Millen, jury chair this year, has been quoted in London, saying, “After the mysterious alchemy of the judging process, Helen Garner emerged as our unanimous choice.
“All six judges agreed that How to End a Story, the first diaries to win the Baillie Gifford Prize, is a remarkable, addictive book. Garner takes the diary form, mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday, to new heights.
“It gives its readers a fascinating insight into the creative reality of a writer’s life—the insecurities, the doubts, the flashes of ego. It is also a recklessly candid, unsparing, occasionally eye-popping account of the implosion of a marriage.
“Garner is a brilliant observer and listener—every page has a surprising, sharp or amusing thought. Her collected diaries will surely be mentioned alongside The Diary of Virginia Woolf.
“It’s a big book but Garner is such good company.”
Repeating the 2025 Baillie Gifford Longlist
For our internationalist readership, a note that the publishers listed here are the UK publishers of the Baillie Gifford’s longlisted titles. In cases of books originally published in other markets before being released in the United Kingdom, you may have encountered different titles.)
| Author, Translator (Nationality) | Title | Publisher and/or Imprint |
| Jason Burke (British) | The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s |
Penguin Random House / Vintage / The Bodley Head |
| Helen Garner (Australian) | How to End a Story: Collected Diaries | Orion Publishing Group / Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| Richard Holmes (British) | The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief | HarperCollins / William Collins |
| Justin Marozzi (British) | Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World | Penguin Random House / Allen Lane |
| Adam Weymouth (British) | Lone Wolf: Walking the Fault Lines of Europe | Penguin Random House / Hutchinson Heinemann / Cornerstone |
| Frances Wilson (British) | Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark | Bloomsbury Publishing / Bloomsbury Circus |
The Initial Pool Topped 350 Books
In addition to chair Robbie Millen, the literary editor of The Times and Sunday Times, the 2025 jury panel comprises:
- Historian Pratinav Anil;
- Journalist Inaya Folarin Iman;
- Cultural historian, biographer and novelist Lucy Hughes-Hallett, a previous winner of the Baillie Gifford;
- The Economist‘s deputy culture editor Rachel Lloyd; and
- Author and biographer Peter Parker.
The jury’s selection of 12 longlistees was made from a starting field of more than 350 books published between November 1 and (upcoming) October 31. That number appears to put the submission figure slightly ahead of last year’s.
The 2024 winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction was Question 7 from Penguin Random House. As was reported for The Times in London by David Sanderson on Thursday (October 2), Flanagan declined to accept his purse as the 2inner of the 2024 Baillie Gifford. He has made it clear that he wouldn’t take the £50,000 unless the program’s name-sponsor agreed to divest itself of hydrocarbon investments.
Program director Toby Mundy has said that the money, rejected by Flanagan, will be contributed to a literary charity.
The prize, originally known as the Samuel Johnson, was first awarded in 1999. For any translated work recognized by the jurors, 75 percent of the available prize money will be awarded to the author and 25 percent will be awarded to the translator(s).
More from Publishing Perspectives on the international publishing business’ book and industry awards is here, more on the United Kingdom’s market is here, more on the Baillie Gifford Prize is here, and more on nonfiction is here.
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