Ganambarr-Stubbs has described<\/a> as \u201ca true history\u201d that has been \u201csung and told orally from generations to generations\u201d.<\/p>\nSpeaking ahead of the ceremony held in Canberra on Thursday night, Norrington, who lived in the Barunga community in Arnhem Land, told Guardian Australia that the recognition of a pre-colonial Australian story by a prestigious award was particularly meaningful for her and Ganambarr-Stubbs.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It\u2019s] important for us that this story has been taken seriously \u2013 that the foundation story of Australia is no longer Captain Cook,\u201d Norrington said. \u201cIt\u2019s about the people who were here before Captain Cook, and winning the prime minister\u2019s award means that\u2019s being acknowledged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prime Minister\u2019s Literary award recipients Rohan Howitt, Kate Wild, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga, Pip Harry, Zana Fraillon and Ender Ba\u015fkan at Parliament House. Photograph: Mick Tsikas\/AAP<\/p>\n
The prize judges praised the novel as a \u201clandmark achievement in fiction\u201d, that was \u201csetting a high benchmark for collaboration between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a profound work of remembrance and re-imagination, fusing oral history, novelistic technique and deep cultural knowledge,\u201d the judges said.<\/p>\n
Knowledge holder Djawundil Maymuru, who was crucial in the relaying of oral histories the book was based upon, died in 2025. The co-author spent much of her life working to bring Yolngu culture and history into the mainstream, Norrington said: \u201cShe would be absolutely thrilled that our story is getting this acknowledgment. We are all very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also on Thursday, the nonfiction prize was awarded to investigative journalist Kate Wild for The Red House \u2013 her book about the death of Kumanjayi Walker, who was shot by Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe in 2019. The judges described Wild\u2019s book as \u201can utterly singular work, offering something nuanced, compassionate and new to a critical and ongoing national conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zana Fraillon was awarded the prize for children\u2019s literature for Song of a Thousand Seas. Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Zana Fraillon was awarded the prize for children\u2019s literature for Song of a Thousand Seas, a \u201cvivid, briny verse novel \u2026 written with depth, heart and care\u201d, the judges said, about an octopus named Houdini who lives in an aquarium and misses the sea.<\/p>\n
The Australian history prize was awarded to environmental historian Rohan Howitt for his first book, The Southern Frontier, which charts Australia\u2019s possessive and enduring relationship with Antarctica.<\/p>\n
Ender Ba\u015fkan won the poetry prize for his debut collection Two Hundred Million Musketeers, depicting the intensity of life as a parent to young children.<\/p>\n
The young adult literature prize was presented to Pip Harry for Drift, a coming-of-age story that navigates change, friendship loss and anxiety disorder in an \u201cinventive and original\u201d novel.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister\u2019s Literary awards are the richest in the country, with a tax-free prize pool of $600,000.<\/p>\n
Each category offers up to $100,000 in prize money: $80,000 tax-free for the winner and $5,000 for up to four shortlisted entries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A \u201clandmark\u201d novel written collaboratively by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal storytellers, fusing pre-colonial Yolngu oral history with western novelistic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-611715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}