MEDIA RELEASE: 2026 Announcing Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award Longlist

Announcing the 2026 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award Longlist

A longlist of 14 books of all kinds – including fiction, poetry, YA, children’s and memoir – has been announced for the $50 000 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award for 2026, from a field of more than 230 entries.

The longlist reflects the extraordinary strength of Indigenous writing and writers, including Evelyn Araluen’s The Rot, Tony Birch’s Pictures of You, Aaron Fa’aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker’s Spirit of the Crocodile, Glen Farmer Illortaminni’s Tiwi in Paris, Natalie Harkin’s Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea, Yawulyu: Art and Song in Warlpiri Women’s Ceremony by Megan Morais and others, and A Piece of Red Cloth by Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru. These books range from academic studies to a book for children.

The other long-listed books are mainly fiction, among them two thrillers – Nicole Crowe’s The Washup, and Garry Disher’s Mischance Creek – and three literary novels: Omar Musa’s Fierceland, Josephine Rowe’s Little World and Raaza Jamshed’s What Kept You? Rounding out this year’s longlist is Hannah Kent’s writing memoir Always Home, Always Homesick and Grace Yee’s poetry collection Joss: A History.

The Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award recognises the best original book, in the judges’ opinion, that has been published in Australia in the previous calendar year. Submissions must deal with any aspect of Australian life and can be in any field or genre of writing, verse or prose. The judges for this year are Dr Lachlan Brown, Dr Leigh Dale, Professor Emerita Susan Martin, Emeritus Professor Paul Salzman (FAHA) and Mary Vernon.

One of the country’s most esteemed and oldest literary prizes, the award is funded by a bequest that commemorates the founding professor of English at James Cook University, Professor Colin Roderick CBE, and his wife Margaret, who collaborated on his literary scholarship. Margaret Roderick oversaw the massive donation that funds the Award.

Having been taken home by some of the country’s most distinguished writers – among them Gail Jones and Peter Temple, and in an earlier generation, Thea Astley and David Malouf – last year the prize was won by first-time author Khin Myint for his memoir Fragile Creatures.

Now this year’s books have been whittled down to fourteen contenders, the judges have retired to their favourite winter reading spots to re-read all of the long-listed books, before deciding on the shortlist and winner.

The books 

Evelyn Araluen, The Rot (UQP) is both a poetic cry for help and a movement toward justice within a world that seems governed by ‘the intimate machines of empire.’ These are poems that skilfully speak about the textures of contemporary life as well as the colonial logic of extraction that continues to cast a shadow over the country.

Tony Birch, Pictures of You: Collected Stories (UQP). This precisely pitched collection of short stories arranges previous favourites with newer tales into a sequenced and varied study of life experiences – grief, joy, struggle, friendship and families.

Nicole Crowe, The Washup (Pantera). As well as a quirky mystery, this provides an interesting view of life on Magnetic Island, off Townsville – not just the spectacular terrain, but the complicated social dynamics created by isolated living. A good read.

Garry Disher, Mischance Creek (Text). The fifth in Disher’s Hirsch series, this story returns to rural South Australia where Constable Paul Hirschhausen struggles with distance and isolation to maintain safety in his community. A crime thriller which will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Aaron Fa’aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker with Lyn White, Spirit of the Crocodile (Allen & Unwin). A YA novel set on Saibai Island in the Torres Strait that features a twelve-year-old boy, Ezra, and his transition towards adulthood in a changing world. Worth reading, whatever your age, for the illuminating insights into TI culture and Ezra’s struggles to combine that with twenty-first century mainland culture.

Natalie Harkin, Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea (Wakefield) is an extraordinary multimodal book that combines personal ‘memory stories’ of indentured Aboriginal domestic servants alongside deep and sensitive archival work. The evocative artistic accompaniments offer a series of profound responses to this period of Australian history.

Glen Farmer Illortaminni, Tiwi in Paris (Thames & Hudson). A highly original, delightful picture-book about an artist from the Tiwi Islands who has a series of adventures after becoming lost in Paris.

Raaza Jamshed, What Kept You? (Giramondo) A complex story that brings modern Australia together with Pakistan in the wake of partition, opening out cultural and family conflicts underpinned by the cruel knowledge that different places each have their own demons. The late chapters explode.

Hannah Kent, Always Home, Always Homesick: A Memoir (Picador). A beautifully written story about Kent’s complex relationship with Iceland, the setting of her acclaimed historical novel Burial Rites.

Megan Morais, Lucy Nampijinpa Martin^†, Peggy Nampijinpa Martin, Marilyn Nampijinpa Martin, Leah Nampijinpa Martin^†, Helen Napurrurla Morton, Janet Nakamarra Long, Maisie Napaljarri Kitson, Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe, Clarrie Kemarr Long, Jeannie Nampijinpa Presley, Marjorie Nampijinpa Brown, Selina Napanangka Williams and Myfany Turpin, Yawulyu: Art and Song in Warlpiri Women’s Ceremony (Aboriginal Studies Press). Bringing together archival materials gathered nearly fifty years ago and contemporary cultural practitioners, this richly illustrated and faultlessly presented book aims to preserve and disseminate knowledge of story, dance, painting and country.

Omar Musa, Fierceland (Penguin). Spectacular, poetic, intense and angry, this novel is about two siblings born in Malaysia who, returning home for their father’s funeral, try to atone for family wealth built on terrible destruction – but can they?

Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru, A Piece of Red Cloth: A Novel from Arnhem Land (Allen & Unwin). Written by Leonie Norrington with Yolŋu elders, this is a powerful, authentic story of a seventeenth-century Yolŋu woman protecting her granddaughter from Macassan traders in Arnhem Land. A fascinating insight into life before colonisation.

Josephine Rowe, Little World (Black Inc.). A novella that moves from the mid twentieth century to the present via the 1970s, and from Nauru to the Kimberley and country Victoria. An unsettling meditation on remains and responsibility, in which apparently disparate times and places are connected by a saintly presence.

Grace Yee, Joss: A History (Giramondo) is a book of poetry which probes and uncovers the long relationship between Australia and China. Sifting through newspaper articles, journal issues, histories and memoir, Yee picks up an array of voices, setting these within new and moving poetic contexts.

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Contact:

Marg Naylor
FALS Administration
0428 585 877 
fals@jcu.edu.au