The history book running out of room for awards stickers has won again

There may soon be more award stickers than cover visible on the already heavily decorated history book – but two more are now on the way.

Professor Clare Wright’s acclaimed history Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions was the big winner at the NSW Literary Awards on Monday night, taking out Book of the Year ($10,000) alongside the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction ($40,000).

In Näku Dhäruk, Wright traces the story of the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petitions, created by Yolngu Elders in northeast Arnhem Land to protest the Menzies government’s decision to excise land for bauxite mining without the consent of Traditional Owners.

The book closes Wright’s acclaimed democracy trilogy – following Stella Prize-winning The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and You Daughters of Freedom – and grew out of years spent living alongside and collaborating with the Yolngu community in Yirrkala.

“You don’t spend 10 years writing a book, as I did with this one, to win awards, so the recognition that comes through awards from peers is just the icing on the cake, but it’s very sweet icing,” said Wright, professor of History and Public Engagement at La Trobe University.

“With this book in particular, it’s all the more delicious because it’s recognition for the community. It’s recognition for the story more broadly.”

‘It’s all the more delicious because it’s recognition for the community. It’s recognition for the story.’

The book has been a dominant presence this awards season, recognised by close to a dozen major prizes, including winning the Australian Political Book of the Year, the Non-Fiction Book Award at the Queensland Literary Awards, and the Northern Territory History Award.

Wright said seeing readers connect with the story had been deeply rewarding.

“The book is in its fourth printing which for an over 600-page work of history about a topic that is, you know, not necessarily sexy or easy, and it’s got a language title that I had to fight for. It means the world to know that people are reading it and that they’re understanding this aspect of Australia’s political history and the role that the Yolngu people played in it,” she said.

The Christina Stead Prize for Fiction ($40,000) was awarded to Moreno Giovannoni for The Immigrants, continuing a breakout moment for the 70-year-old translator after his second novel also claimed The Age’s Book of the Year honour.

Drawing heavily on the experiences of his late parents, who migrated to Australia from Italy in the 1950s, The Immigrants follows an Italian family forging a life in rural Victoria.

Giovannoni said Australians were familiar with romanticised stories of postwar Italian arrivals building new lives in Australia, but he wanted to explore the more complicated realities of displacement, grief and hardship.

“I’d always wanted to be a writer, right from when I was a teenager, but somehow it didn’t happen. I became a translator instead, and I thought if I’m not gonna do it now, I’m never gonna do it.”

Yet despite the accolades and a third novel already on his mind, Giovannoni said he still struggled to think of himself as a novelist.

“I sit at my iMac, upstairs looking out onto the garden, and I do my translations, and occasionally, I stop, I clear the desk, and I write. I’m making notes all the time on my phone, ideas, and so on and occasionally, I sit down and write a bit, and it slowly grows, you know, but I’m not a writer. I don’t consider myself a writer.”

The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000) went to Jill Jones for How To Emerge.

Other winners included Gone by Michel Streich, which won the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature; Desert Tracks by Marly Wells and Linda Wells, which took out the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature; and Natalie Harkin’s Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea, which won the Indigenous Writers’ Prize.

The Multicultural NSW Award went to playwright S. Shakthidharan for his memoir Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath, while the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing was awarded to Micaela Sahhar for non-fiction work Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family. Shaun Grant nabbed the scriptwriting award for episode four of the TV adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North, while Andrea James was recognised for playwriting with The Black Woman of Gippsland.

Emily Maguire won the People’s Choice Award for her historical novel Rapture.

Formerly known as the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the prizes are the richest and longest-running state-based literary awards in Australia after they were established in 1979 by then-premier Neville Wran.

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