Written by Guest Contributor Jackie Lee Morrison

Emma Pei Yin, author of When Sleeping Women Wake (Hachette Australia, 2025), has just been announced as the winner of the Debut Fiction category in the 2026 Indie Book Awards, the Australian independent bookseller awards coordinated by Leading Edge Books. It’s an incredible outcome for Pei Yin, not only as she’s the first Chinese-Australian author to win the category, but also thanks to the long-lasting popularity and interest in her debut novel — a rarity in the publishing world, which Pei Yin knows only too well as an ex-bookseller. 

“I finally feel seen,” she says. “It feels like booksellers have held When Sleeping Women Wake in their hands and said, ‘I see you,’ which has been validating after a long period of feeling very unseen as a woman of colour. It’s a real testament to not only the story of the book but also my own author’s story connecting with booksellers.”

Pei Yin found out she’d won the category while in Hong Kong recently at The Hong Kong International Literary Festival, where she’d been invited to speak at several events, including one at the prestigious Hong Kong Club, membership of which was famously exclusive to European men only until the 1970s.

“I was standing outside the JW Marriott, trying to get an Uber, when I got the text from my publisher. I started tearing up, and the valet thought I was upset because I couldn’t get a taxi!”

The award is the cherry on top of a busy year since When Sleeping Women Wake was released. Pei Yin has not only been working on her sophomore novel but also launched her own Asian book tour across Hong Kong and Singapore, spoke at the Canberra Writers Festival, had a sold-out workshop at the Riverina Readers Festival, and will be upcoming at the Newcastle Writers Festival, Northern Beaches Readers’ Festival, and Words on the Waves Writers Festival. She also expanded her editorial agency, yinfluence editorial, with plans to expand again later this year, and started the PoC-focused literary podcast Served With Rice which we co-host together with Vietnamese-Australian author Jacquie Pham (Those Opulent Days, Ultimo, 2024).

Of the award, Pei Yin says:

“In a way, this means more to me than other awards, because with The Indies there’s more opportunity for those chosen to shine, plus it shows what the industry is actually interested in. As a smaller award, winning it has a bigger impact.” 

For Pei Yin, however, the award comes with a certain amount of pressure, especially around expectations for her next book, which she wonders if “cis, white authors” would also feel.

“Do we, as PoC women, feel more pressure going into the next book? In a way, this sort of thing never feels real — there’s a kind of disconnect between Author Emma and Real Emma. I feel like that side of me is still someone I’m just getting to know.”

Finally, I ask Pei Yin what she hopes to see in the Australian publishing scene in the future.

“This may be a bit controversial, but I want to see less fellowship awards tailored to writers in the margins — people should be able to walk through the front door without needing special categories designed to keep us in the margins,” she says.

“But I’d also like to see more PoC booksellers, publicists, and publishers — I want more representation in the industry as a whole, not just with authors.”

When Sleeping Women Wake by Emma Pei Yin (Hachette Australia, 2025; $32. ninety nine AUD).

—

Jackie Lee Morrison is a British-HK writer and editor based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (New Zealand). She is the founder of Marginalia Lit Fest Live, an online international literary festival, and co-host of the PoC-centred Trans-Tasman podcast Served With Rice. When not writing or editing, you’ll find Jackie petting all the pets and eating all the noods. She is represented by Naomi Eisenbeiss at InkWell Management. www.jackieleemorrison.com