Prime Minister’s Literary awards 2026: ‘profound’ novel based on Yolngu oral history wins $80,000

A Piece of Red Cloth co-author Leonie Norrington (left) with Yolngu elder and co-author Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs at The Roma Bar in Darwin. The book was written collaboratively by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal storytellers, fusing pre-colonial Yolngu oral history with western novelistic storytelling. Photograph: Leonie Norrington

A “landmark” novel written collaboratively by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal storytellers, fusing pre-colonial Yolngu oral history with western novelistic storytelling, has won the $80,000 Prime Minister’s Literary award for fiction.

A Piece of Red Cloth, written by novelist Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs and Yolngu knowledge holders Djawundil Maymuru and Djawa Burarrwanga, is set in a coastal north-east Arnhem Land community in the 1600s, when Makassan fishers, from what we now know as Indonesia, would trade with the Yolngu people during the wet season.