‘Perhaps the great Australian novel’: Alexis Wright wins Stella prize for second time with Praiseworthy

‘We need works of scale in literature at the moment, because of the urgency of what’s happening’: Alexis Wright, who has won the Stella prize for a second time. Photograph: Darren James

Alexis Wright has made history by becoming the first person to win the Stella prize for literature twice.

On Thursday night, the 73-year-old Waanyi writer collected the $60,000 prize, awarded to outstanding literature by Australian women and non-binary authors, for her fourth novel, Praiseworthy, a book of epic scale praised by the judges as “genre-bending” and “canon-breaking”.