Professor Clare Wright, author of Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions, has won book of the year at the NSW Literary Awards. The historian received $50,000 for her nonfiction work, which judges praised as deeply researched, highly original, and vividly alive.
A Landmark Work on Indigenous Land Rights
The book chronicles the creation of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions, a seminal moment in Australia’s land rights history. In 1963, Yolngu elders presented these landmark documents to the Australian parliament on painted bark frames, seeking government intervention after a portion of the Arnhem Land Reserve was licensed to a French mining company. Although the petitions did not halt mining, they led to the first land rights legislation in Australia, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.
Written Like a Novel
Written more like a novel than traditional historical nonfiction, Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions treats its subjects as characters, immersing readers in their political aspirations and acts of resilience without the sense of inevitability typical of historical works. At a ceremony at the NSW State Library, the book won the $10,000 top prize along with the $40,000 Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction. Judges called it a work of national significance, noting that the personal accounts felt vividly alive with extraordinary depth of research and sophisticated scholarship. They declared, “It is a book that should be read by all Australians.”
Part of a Democracy Trilogy
This book is the third in Wright’s “democracy trilogy” about defining moments in Australia’s political history. The trilogy includes the 2014 Stella Prize-winning Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, which shares stories of women during the 1850s Eureka Stockade, and You Daughters of Freedom, about white Australian women winning the right to vote. Wright, awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2020, has already won multiple awards for Näku Dhäruk, including the 2025 Australian Political Book of the Year. She joked that her book’s cover design is now “more stickers than cover,” comparing it to a wine bottle one would buy by the case.
A Collaborative Decade-Long Effort
Wright spent a decade writing the 640-page work, which she calls collaborative, having lived and worked with the Yirrkala community. “The Yolngu people wanted me to tell it because they wanted Australia to know their story,” she said. Readers familiar with northeast Arnhem Land have told her that reading the book felt like going home. Wright is considered a culturally adopted member of the Yunupingu family; it was 1978 Australian of the Year Galarrwuy Yunupingu who gave her the language title in 2020. Näku means “bark” and Dhäruk means “the word” or “message” in Yolngu matha (tongue). Despite initial nervousness about the language title, the book has gone to its fourth print in just over a year, proving a hunger for stories that enrich the nation’s past.
Other Award Winners
Other winners at the ceremony included Moreno Giovannoni, who won the $40,000 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction for The Immigrants, described as an absolute gem blending fiction and family memoir. The Multicultural NSW Award went to playwright S. Shakthidharan for Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath, a lyrical book that expands the genre of memoir. In children’s literature, Gone by Michel Streich won the Patricia Wrightson Prize, and Desert Tracks by Marly Wells and Linda Wells shared the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature. The Black Woman of Gippsland by Andrea James took the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting, and the Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting went to Shaun Grant for episode four of The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry was awarded to Jill Jones for How to Emerge, praised for its mastery of catalogue and repetition. The Indigenous Writers’ Prize went to Natalie Harkin for Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea, covering a brutal chapter in history about First Nations women used as indentured servants in South Australia. Micaela Sahhar won the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing for Find Me at the Jaffa Gate, a deeply moving and confronting book. The University of Sydney’s People’s Choice Award went to Emily Maguire for her rapturous prose in the historical novel Rapture.
