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<\/p>\nA novel based on the oral history of Yol\u014bu people from north-east Arnhem Land has been named as this year’s fiction pick at the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.<\/p>\n
Darwin-born author Leonie Norrington and co-authors Djawundil Maymuru, Merrikiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs and Djawa Burarrwanga have won the $80,000 fiction prize for their book A Piece of Red Cloth.<\/p>\n
Told from the perspective of Yol\u014bu people, the book tells the story of a grandmother’s quest to protect her granddaughter from Macassan trepang fishermen during the 1600s, while they learn to interact with foreigners.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Leonie Norrington says winning the award is a “recognition of history”. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards judges labelled the novel as a “landmark achievement in fiction”, writing it “is also an urgent example of intercultural work, setting a high benchmark for collaboration between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers”.<\/p>\n
“It is a profound work of remembrance and re-imagination, fusing oral history, novelistic technique and deep cultural knowledge,” the judges said.<\/p>\n
Having grown up in the Barunga community, Dr Norrington said her Aboriginal mother Clare Bush inspired her to write A Piece of Red Cloth before she died.<\/p>\n
Dr Norrington said her Aboriginal mother wanted the Yol\u014bu people’s story told to help people in other parts of the country to understand the country was “alive” and we are “one with the earth”.<\/p>\n
“If we only have what she called ‘Captain Cook history’, then we’re always going to have a frontier mentality about our country,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We can exploit the country because we’re not from the country.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister’s Literary Awards announced<\/a><\/p>\n Kate Wild’s book about the fatal shooting of Kumanjayi Walker and the ensuing murder trial, The Red House, is one of six PMLA winners.<\/p>\n “We could belong to the country and then have more respect for the country and for the first peoples of the country, not just as the first people who lived here, but the people who emerged at the same time as the country.”<\/p>\n Speaking to Radio National in 2025, local custodian Merrikiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs said the book explores cultural traditions that are still apparent in modern communities while re-telling the story of how Yol\u014bu people had been trading with countries overseas for centuries.<\/p>\n Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs accepted the award in Canberra on Thursday. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)<\/p>\n “All I can is that we still live like this, like what’s happening in the book today,” she told the program.<\/p>\n “Even if we are modern people, we still go out bush, we till dig for that yams, for those roots get it up oysters, still live it, still eat it.”<\/p>\n Dr Norrington said winning the award was a “recognition of history” and hoped her book could be a driving force for action.<\/p>\n “Our history has been read by the Prime Minister of Australia and now things can change,” she said.<\/p>\n Leonie Norrington and Merrikiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs were part of the group that collaborated to write A Piece of Red Cloth. (Supplied)<\/p>\n “I think if I was going to have a message to the prime minister, I think it would be that Australia is a terribly, terribly dry and very fragile country and we need to look after it.<\/p>\n “The future generations of Australia really rely on us making good decisions about what we do with this very fragile land.”<\/p>\n A Piece of Red Cloth wasn’t the only NT winner at the prestigious awards \u2014 Kate Wild’s book The Red House, about the fatal shooting of Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu and the murder trial of police officer Zachary Rolfe, won the non-fiction category<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A novel based on the oral history of Yol\u014bu people from north-east Arnhem Land has been named as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[456824,64,63,11195,134,457814,423645,457812,457815,457813,114770],"class_list":["post-888160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-a-piece-of-red-cloth","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-book-awards","tag-entertainment","tag-indigenous-novel","tag-indigenous-stories","tag-leonie-norrington","tag-macassans","tag-merrikiyawuy-ganambarr-stubbs","tag-prime-ministers-literary-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Merrkiyawuy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/51b9d8bdf6d360470c526e00307dffd6.jpeg\")
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