The Red House by investigative journalist Kate Wild has won the non-fiction category at the 2026 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, one of six $80,000 category prizes announced Thursday night at a ceremony at the National Library of Australia in Canberra.
Wild's initial response to discovering she was among the winners was a bout of shocked swearing, the author told AAP.
"You just don't ever expect something like this, it's not the stuff you're thinking about when you're in the thick of writing a really complicated story," she said.
In 2019, Kumanjayi Walker was shot three times by former police constable Zachary Rolfe in the outback community of Yuendumu, after he stabbed the then-officer with scissors.
The killing sparked nationwide protests and Rolfe was charged with murder, with aspects of the case tested in the High Court.
Rolfe was ultimately acquitted in a Supreme Court trial, but a coroner later found he held racist attitudes that may have influenced his actions, and the NT police force also had the hallmarks of institutional racism.
A Walkley award-winning journalist, Wild said it was obvious from the outset how significant the case would be for the nation.
"Because I had lived in the Territory, I had a sense of what would happen, and I also had a really strong sense that how Australia responded would be a really clear signal of where we were at," she said.
The Red House took five years to complete, during which Wild cobbled together freelance gigs, writing grants, and frequent flyer points, to enable her to spend an extended period of time in the remote Northern Territory - including many hours spent simply sitting outside the Yuendumu shop.
"If you want Aboriginal people in remote communities to trust you, you've got to physically show up and keep showing up, until you prove to people that you are not just coming in to grab something and run away," said Wild.
Taking time to tell the story in book form was necessary not only for engaging respectfully with traumatised community members, but to explore the long and violent history underlying the killing and the case that followed.
As a white person, Wild struggled with writing about the shooting, but she ultimately concluded that the story was as much about the history and attitudes of white Australia as it was about an Aboriginal community.
Aboriginal friends advised her to take the risk, while publishers Allen & Unwin also appointed two Aboriginal editors to work on the manuscript.
The Prime Minister's Literary Awards offer a total prize pool of $600,000 tax free, with $80,000 for category winners and $5,000 for up to four shortlisted entries per category.
2026 Prime Minister's Literary Awards – Winners
* Australian History: The Southern Frontier by Rohan Howitt
* Children's Literature: Song of a Thousand Seas by Zana Fraillon
* Fiction: A Piece of Red Cloth by Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru
* Non-fiction: The Red House by Kate Wild
* Poetry: Two Hundred Million Musketeers by Ender Başkan
* Young adult literature: Drift by Pip Harry
