Evelyn Araluen has been shortlisted for the Stella prize for her second poetry collection The Rot, four years after she became the first ever poet to win the prize for Australian women and non-binary writers.

Announced on Wednesday, the other five books up for the $60,000 prize are Geraldine Brooks’ memoir Memorial Days, Miranda Darling’s novel Fireweather, Lee Lai’s graphic novel Cannon, Marika Sosnowski’s nonfiction 58 Facets: On Violence and the Law, and Tasma Walton’s novel I Am Nannertgarrook.

In February Araluen won $125,000 and the top prize at the Victorian premier’s literary awards for The Rot, a collection that explores grief and solidarity in the age of doomscrolling, particularly the horror felt by many as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza was beamed to phones around the world.

The Rot was inspired by an experience Araluen had while reading two poems at Adelaide writers’ week in 2024, where she was heckled for referring to Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza as a genocide on stage.

Araluen told Guardian Australia last month that The Rot reflected “a really panicked, distressed window of a time, that I hope we all look back on with horror and despair and a real sense of regret.”

“I tried to make sure that the book very clearly documented that we knew what was happening in our names and we did not stop it,” she said. “I hope that this book dates. I hope it reads as incredibly naive and doesn’t catch a glimpse of the political ambitions that are going to be realised in the future. But if it doesn’t, I want it to be a record of a very, very uncomfortable truth that we’re all going to have to live with.”

The Goorie and Koori poet won the Stella prize in 2022 for her debut collection, Dropbear.

The six shortlisted books were chosen from the 212 books entered this year. Each of the shortlisted authors receives $5,000 in prize money.

Brooks’ memoir Memorial Days explores her grief after the sudden death of her partner of 35 years, the journalist Tony Horwitz. The award-winning Australian-American author left her home in Martha’s Vineyard to travel to Flinders Island, off Tasmania’s northeast tip, in order to reflect on their life together.

Darling’s novel Fireweather is a follow-up to her 2024 novel Thunderhead, and follows a woman who must prove she is sane while dealing with the collapse of her marriage, domestic life and the climate.

Non-binary graphic novelist Lai is nominated a second time for the Stella with Cannon, about a queer Chinese woman who suppresses her emotions until they erupt out of her.

Sosnowski, a legal anthropologist, is nominated for 58 Facets, a hybrid of memoir and investigative nonfiction that examines how individuals can be both beneficiaries and victims of history, through her work in Syria and the story of her own family. These include her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who fled to Australia, and her great-uncle Chaim Gaon, who played a role in the formation of the Israeli military.

And Walton is nominated for I am Nannertgarrook, a fictionalised retelling of the life of her titular ancestor, who was abducted from Boonwurrung Country and sold into slave labour in Tasmania.

Chair of judges, Sophie Gee, said the six shortlisted books “reflect the creative vitality, literary rigor, and expressive richness of Australian women’s and non-binary writing”.

“None of these books was as we expected, going in. Each of them moved us to the core through language, the truth of their emotion, and the honesty of what it means to be human, across time and space,” Gee said.

The 2026 Stella prize winner will be announced on 13 May. Last year the prize was won by Michelle de Kretser for her novel Theory and Practice.