Novel co-authored with indigenous elders wins Australian award
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Leonie Norrington and Yolngu cultural custodians Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga, and Djawundil Maymuru jointly received the $80,000 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction in Canberra, Australia.
The collaborators won for their novel A Piece of Red Cloth, making it the first co-authored book to earn the prize. The book blends oral history with fiction and cultural knowledge, telling the story of a Yolngu family and their encounters with Macassan fishermen, seafarers from modern-day Indonesia, in the late 1600s.
Norrington expressed hope that the award will encourage more people to read the novel and reshape Australia’s understanding of its history. She wants the nation’s foundational story to acknowledge Australia’s First Peoples not just as the original inhabitants, but as intrinsically connected to the land itself. The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards also recognised other authors.
Kate Wild won the nonfiction prize for The Red House, Rohan Howitt received the Australian history award for The Southern Frontier, Ender Başkan won the poetry award for Two Hundred Million Musketeers, Zana Fraillon took the children’s book award for Song of a Thousand Seas, and Pip Harry earned the Young Adult prize for Drift.
