Clode has received the Rhodes Scholarship (South Australia, 1990), the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2007, a Whitley Award for Best Popular Zoology book in 2017 and was short-listed for a Children’s Book Council Award in 2010 and 2016 as well as numerous writing fellowships. Clode's 2018 biography of Australian naturalist Edith Coleman, The Wasp and the Orchid, was shortlisted for the 2019 National Biography Award. In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World was shortlisted for the 2022 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature Nonfiction Award.
