First Name Second Name Shortlisted for the 2026 MUD Literary Prize

UQP are incredibly excited to share the news that Steve MinOn's First Name Second Name has been shortlisted for the 2026 MUD Literary Prize.

A vampire, a con artist, a teenage driver, and a chorus of storytellers walk onto a shortlist: four distinct visions, one unforgettable lineup.

The 2026 MUD Literary Prize celebrates the irrepressible energy of new Australian writing. The four novels on this year’s shortlist move across strikingly different forms: an ancestral tale with a supernatural pulse; a biting satire of literary ambition; a road trip that slides into moral freefall; and a collaborative work, grounded in oral history, that holds deep history and contemporary life in the same breath.

What unites them is a shared spirit of daring. These stories explore what fiction can carry: the weight of history, the pull of inheritance, the seductions of ambition, the burden of violence, and the enduring strength of storytelling passed from voice to voice. Each draws the reader in close and leaves them somewhere new.

Here’s what the judges had to say:

"First Name Second Name by Steve MinOn (UQP) is the novel with the most audacious premise: Stephen Bolin, pronounced dead, escapes from the hospital morgue and sets out to walk back to his birthplace. Drawing on Chinese jiangshi lore – wakeful corpses driven by unfinished business – MinOn uses the supernatural as a way into questions of inheritance and identity.

Along the way, he unfurls the multigenerational trauma of a family shaped by migration, queer desire, and the violence of being neither fully seen nor wholly understood. What could have buckled under contrivance becomes instead a raw investigation into belonging and self-recognition. The dead may not speak, but MinOn’s novel suggests they can still do the hard, earnest work of haunting."

The winner will be announced on 17 February.

Read more about First name Second Name and secure your copy here.