RecipeTin Eats' Nagi Maehashi bests Brooke Bellamy at Australian Book Industry Awards

Australia Broadcast Center

07-05-2025

Nagi Maehashi, the founder of wildly popular food blog RecipeTin Eats, has bested fellow cookbook author Brooke Bellamy in a major book prize.
Both cooks were up for Illustrated Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs), held in Melbourne on Wednesday night, but Maehashi came out on top — just one week after she
Photo shows
a composite image of two women
Brooke Bellamy rejects claims by popular Australian cook Nagi Maehashi that two recipes in the cookbook Bake with Brooki are copied.
Last week, Maehashi said two recipes in Bellamy's cookbook, Bake with Brooki, had "specific and detailed" similarities to ones she published on her website. Bellamy has denied the allegations.
The ABIAs celebrate books that are popular with readers and with booksellers, and are judged by a mix of publishers, booksellers, librarians, distributors, literary agents and journalists.
The latest book from Maehashi, RecipeTin Eats: Tonight, was the
Tonight sold more than 78,000 copies in its first week, breaking the record for a non-fiction title.
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"It is hearty and accessible [food], the type of food that everybody loves, so it doesn't alienate people,"
she said.
The overall winner at the ABIAs on Wednesday was John Farnham's memoir, The Voice Inside, co-written with Poppy Stockell, which took out Book of the Year, Audiobook of the Year and Biography of the Year. The memoir, which sold 92,000 copies in 2024, came in third on last year's adult non-fiction bestsellers, after Maehashi's cookbooks.
The first-ever memoir from Farnham grew out of dozens of conversations between the musician and Stockell.
Farnham's 1985 record, Whispering Jack, is Australia's highest-selling album by a local artist.
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She
"It was definitely hard for him [to talk about]," she said. "There were a lot of years of really hard experiences.
"But he's the master of his story. He's the owner of his narrative. We gently peeked through it and sort of constructed it."
The most-loved novels of 2024
Perth-based Irish writer Dervla McTiernan won General Fiction Book of the Year, for her thriller, What Happened to Nina?, while Robbie Arnott won Literary Fiction Book of the Year for his historical-fiction novel, Dusk.
What Happened to Nina? was the fourth-most-popular adult fiction book in Australia in 2024, selling 57,000 copies, after the latest from Liane Moriarty,
The book is McTiernan's first win at the ABIAs, after being shortlisted for her crime novel, The Good Turn.
What Happened to Nina? was inspired, as McTiernan
The events in What Happened to Nina? have drawn parallels to high-profile true crime cases, including the murder of Gabby Petito.
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ABC Perth: Mitch Edgar
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"You absolutely believe your son is innocent, because you know your son," she said. "Or [if] you're the parent of a missing daughter [you think]: 'This story that he's telling does not make sense. Why would he lie?'
"As a parent, your love for your child is so powerful. Is there anything you wouldn't do for your child?
"It just sent me thinking."
Arnott's win is also his first at the ABIAs, after being shortlisted in previous years for his novels The Rain Heron and
In her review for ABC Arts, Claire Nichols described Arnott as "heir apparent" to Tim Winton as the "master of writing Australian landscapes".
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Dusk is the story of twins Iris and Floyd who hunt a puma through the highlands of 19th-century Tasmania. One inspiration for the book, as Arnott
"[What] if they'd been brought over for a reason?" he said.
In Dusk, pumas are brought to Tasmania from Patagonia to control the deer population, who are a nuisance to both the environment and sheep farmers. But the pumas begin hunting sheep, and irate graziers go after the cats.
By the beginning of the novel, only one puma remains — named Dusk — and it has a bounty on its head. But it has started killing the people who go after it.
"While it's [a story] I've completely made up, it also just felt not too far from reality, especially when you look at some of the stranger parts of colonial history in the species that were moved back and forth across the globe on a whim," Arnott said.
"
We're really great at not learning from the past.
"
Other winners at the 2025 ABIAs include
Australian Book Industry Award winners 2025
ABIA Book of the Year
The Voice Inside by John Farnham with Poppy Stockell (Hachette)
Audiobook of the Year
The Voice Inside by John Farnham with Poppy Stockell; narrated by John Farnham, Jill Farnham and Gaynor Wheatley (Squaresound)
Biography Book of the Year
The Voice Inside by John Farnham with Poppy Stockell (Hachette)
The John Marsden Book of the Year for Older Children (ages 13+)
My Family and Other Suspects by Kate Emery (Allen & Unwin)
Book of the Year for Younger Children (ages 7–12)
Wurrtoo by Tylissa Elisara, illustrated by Dylan Finney (Lothian)
Children's Picture Book of the Year (ages 0–6)
The Truck Cat by Deborah Frenkel, illustrated by Danny Snell (Bright Light)
General Fiction Book of the Year
What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins)
General Non-fiction Book of the Year
The Chairman's Lounge by Joe Aston (Scribner)
Illustrated Book of the Year
RecipeTin Eats: Tonight by Nagi Maehashi (Pan Macmillan)
International Book of the Year
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre)
Literary Fiction Book of the Year
Dusk by Robbie Arnott (Picador)
Small Publishers' Adult Book of the Year
All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot by Lucinda Price (Pantera)
Small Publishers' Children's Book of the Year
Leo and Ralph by Peter Carnavas (University of Queensland Press)
Social Impact Book of the Year
Brainstorm by Richard Scolyer with Garry Maddox (Allen & Unwin)
The Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year
We Are the Stars by Gina Chick (Summit)