On Tuesday, Helen Garner’s How to End a Story: Collected Diaries was announced as the 2025 winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, which recognizes excellence in nonfiction from authors of any nationality published in English in the UK. Garner’s book was chosen from a shortlist of six, itself whittled down from from a list of 350 books published between November 2024 and October 2025.

“After the mysterious alchemy of the judging process, Helen Garner emerged as our unanimous choice,” said Robbie Millen, Chair of Judges, in a statement.

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—funny, original, clever, self-lacerating, always interesting—that we didn’t want the story to end.”

Garner will be awarded £50,000; each other shortlisted author will receive £5,000.