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Nagi Maehashi, the creator behind wildly popular food blog RecipeTin Eats, has won the top prize at the annual Australian Book Industry Awards.

The Sydney food writer and Good Food columnist won Book of the Year and Illustrated Book of the Year for her debut cookbook RecipeTin Eats: Dinner.

Nagi Maehashi won Book of the Year at the ABIAs on Thursday night.Credit: James Brickwood

Among the other winners of the night were Tim Winton, who claimed a Hall of Fame Award for his 40-year career in the industry; Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, who won the award for literary fiction; The Age and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Niki Savva, who won the non-fiction book award; Jasper Jones author Craig Silvey, who won the prize for writing for children aged 7-12; retired tennis player Ash Barty, who took out best biography; and former Aussie Rules player Eddie Betts who won the award for a book that has made a social impact.

Released in October, RecipeTin Eats: Dinner quickly became a bestseller and the highest-selling title by a debut Australian author in its first week of release.

It is made up of more than 150 recipes, including some reader favourites, each with its own QR code linking to an online video tutorial.

The website that Maehashi launched in 2014 receives more than 14 million visitors each week.

But speaking to this masthead in late 2022, Maehashi was humble about her success.

“I am just like everybody else,” she said. “I shop where everyone shops, I don’t go to gourmet stores … The thing that really resonates, that people say to me, is that I’ve somehow managed to guess the recipes people want.”

The cookbook author also runs a not-for-profit food bank, RecipeTin Meals, feeding up to 500 people in Sydney a day.

Maehashi is one of four debut authors to be recognised at the event at Sydney’s Doltone House on Thursday night, alongside Siang Lu, whose novel The Whitewash won best audiobook; crime writer Hayley Scrivenor whose book Dirt Town won the general fiction category; and crime writer Shelley Burr whose book Wake won the prize for new writing.

Barty and Betts were two out of three First Nations writers to be recognised at the ABIAs, both for their debut memoirs: Ngaragu woman Barty for My Dream Time; and Gubrun and Wirangu/Kokatha man Betts for The Boy from Boomerang Crescent. They were joined by Worimi author Paul Callaghan, who won the award for a book for adults released by a small publisher for his self-help book The Dreaming Path.

They join other First Nations writers who have recently been acknowledged by literary prizes, including many of the winners of Monday’s NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, including Debra Dank, Corey Tutt and Blak Douglas.

The winners at the ABIAs were selected by more than 250 publishers, booksellers, agents, media and industry representatives.

Sydney Morning Herald subscribers can enjoy 2-for-1 tickets* to the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales during June 2023. Click here for more details.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.

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