Gabriel Rolfe wins 2026 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & Lewitt Studios Essay Prize
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article refers to an Indigenous person who has died.
Australian writer Gabriel Rolfe has won the 2026 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize for his proposal for “Interior Station: An Essay in Complicity”, a “genre-bending account of colonial violence and complicity”.
In “Interior Station”, Rolfe sets out to trace his ancestral roots in the violent settlement of the Australian colonies after learning he shares a family name with one of the officers charged with the murder of Warlpiri-Luritja man Kumanjayi Walker in 2019. Rolfe “draws on archival work and a complex family history to grapple with these connections, and with the sudden loss of his own mother in the wake of the trial, weaving memoir, essay and fiction into an exploration of colonial brutality, addiction and collective guilt”, the prize organisers said.
Rolfe is an Australian writer, teacher and researcher based in London. His experimental prose work/poem, “Nullarbor”, a meditation on the conflict of First Nations and Settler languages, was awarded the John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan Prize in 2022.
The 2026 prize judges were Joanna Biggs, Brian Dillon, Max Porter, Joanna Kavenna and Jacques Testard. The other shortlisted authors, chosen from 150 entries, were Emily Cooper for “Relics”, Douglas Gerrard for “Mambesak”, Orsod Malik for “Qissas”, Cara Marks for “Soft-bodied Monsters” and Brendton Steele for “Fabulous Muscles”.
The annual Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize for unpublished writers awards £4,000 to the best proposal for a book-length essay by a writer resident in the UK and Ireland who has yet to secure a publishing deal. The winner also has the opportunity to spend up to 6 weeks in residency at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios in Spoleto, Italy to work on their book.
More information on the prize is available on the Fitzcarraldo Editions website.
Category: Awards Local news
