September 10, 2026 — 8:00pmA groundbreaking collaboration drawing on Yolngu oral history has become the first co-authored book to win the $80,000 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction.A Piece of Red Cloth, written by novelist Leonie Norrington and Yolngu cultural custodians Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru, was named the fiction winner at the National Library of Australia in Canberra on Thursday night.Rohan Howitt, Kate Wild, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Dimathaya Burarrwanga, Pip Harry, Zana Fraillon and Ender Başkan with their prize-winning books at the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.Alex EllinghausenSet in north-east Arnhem Land before European settlement, the novel centres on a Yolngu family confronting the arrival of Macassan fishermen from what is now Indonesia, in the late 1600s.At its heart are matriarch Batjani and her granddaughter Garritji, who is preparing for marriage when Batjani attempts to protect her from the visiting trepang fishers.It was one of six books awarded $80,000. Kate Wild’s The Red House, which explores the fatal shooting of Kumanjayi Walker and the murder trial of Constable Zachary Rolfe, won non-fiction, while Rohan Howitt’s The Southern Frontier took out Australian history and Ender Baskan’s Two Hundred Million Musketeers won poetry. Zana Fraillon’s Song of a Thousand Seas won children’s literature, while Pip Harry’s Drift nabbed young adult literature.The fiction judging panel – made up of critics and writers Beejay Silcox, Nicholas Jose, Andre Dao and Sophie Cunningham – described A Piece of Red Cloth as “a landmark achievement in fiction”.The winners of the 2026 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.“From its first pages, the reader is immersed in the world of the Yolngu as it was in the 1600s, a world of language, Law and Country, deep magic and petty politics, dignity and desire,” the judges said. “It is a profound work of remembrance and re-imagination, fusing oral history, novelistic technique and deep cultural knowledge.”At the heart of A Piece of Red Cloth is a collaboration between Yolngu custodians and Norrington, who grew up in the Barunga community in Arnhem Land after her family moved there in the 1960s, where her father worked as the station mechanic.Norrington said the novel took two decades to write after her Yolngu adoptive mother, the late Clare Bush, asked her to write it so non-Indigenous Australians could see another side of Indigenous history, “not just the Captain Cook one”. The story, she said, has been passed down for generations through dance, song, poetry, storytelling and art.“I worked with the owners [the co-authors] of the story tied to my adopted mother’s Country,” Norrington said. “We first talked through the draft and then nutted out scenes. I read back the scenes and made changes – many times up to 20 people were listening and commenting because the story is owned far and wide, so lots of people have opinions about how it should be told.“The negotiations and writing all happened on Country. But the final edits were read onto recordings and then sent out via email or over the phone.”Leonie Norrington and co-writer Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs.Leonie NorringtonThe win is the latest in a run of accolades for the novel, which was also shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and The Age Book of the Year fiction award, and won the Australian Book Industry Award for social impact.“We hope it means more people read the book and that Australia’s foundational story becomes changed to include, in a fundamental way, Australia’s first people as the Country, rather than just the people who were here first,” Norrington said.Established in 2008, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are the country’s richest annual literary prize, carrying a total tax-free pool of $600,000.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the winning works demonstrated “the depth and diversity” of Australian literature.“Our stories connect us across generations, cultures and communities, and allow the world to see Australia through Australian eyes,” he said.From our partners