Alien abductions, menopausal mermaids, a single-sentence novel and a cursed vagina; Australian literature in 2026 is looking marvellously unhinged. Here\u2019s a sneak peek.<\/p>\n
FictionBig names taking big risks<\/p>\n
The Miles Franklin-winner Amanda Lohrey (author of The Labyrinth) moves from inner space to outer space with a novel about a psychiatrist whose patients report cosmic encounters (Capture<\/a>, Text, April). Best known for her morally searching nonfiction, Chloe Hooper takes a detour with a cold war thriller, Lady Spy (Scribner, November), while the ever-antic Steve Toltz reappears with more existential absurdity (A Rising of the Lights<\/a>, Penguin, April). Meanwhile, the polymathic Robert Forster \u2013 co-founder of the Go-Betweens \u2013 has written his first novel: \u201ca rock-and-roll road trip\u201d (Songwriters on the Run<\/a>, Penguin, May).<\/p>\n Chloe Hooper, who is releasing cold war thriller Lady Spy in November. Photograph: Eugene Hyland\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Two of Ozlit\u2019s cage-rattlers are back. Michael Winkler\u2019s debut, Grimmish, was the first self-published novel to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin<\/a>. Now he brings us Griefdogg<\/a>: the story of a despairing climate scientist who decides he\u2019d rather be a family pet (Text, March). And Kris Kneen returns to fiction with Rite of Spring, a novel of marriage, madness, middle age and \u2026 sea monsters (Transit Lounge, July).<\/p>\n Expect serious metafictional mischief from the reigning Miles Franklin-winner, Siang Lu, whose new novel takes The Odyssey for a joyride (Useless Tse, Scribner, September). And Shaun Micallef is having a great deal of fun with De\u2019Ath Takes a Holiday<\/a>, a book that sounds like Forrest Gump has been bitten by Dracula \u2013 or perhaps the other way around (Ultimo, March).<\/p>\n It promises to be a mighty year for Ozlit. Look for new fiction from: Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Max Easton, Kathryn Heyman, Fiona Kelly McGregor, Suzie Miller, Favel Parrett, Edwina Preston, Mirandi Riwoe and Clare Thomas. There\u2019s even a double helping \u2013 fiction and nonfiction \u2013 from that wildly inventive scriptomaniac Yumna Kassab (Goodbye, My Love<\/a>, Ultimo, April; and The Parramatta Dictionary, Giramondo, July).<\/p>\n Eco-lit flourishesEnvironmentalist Tim Flannery and his daughter Emma Flannery have co-written A Brief History of Climate Folly (out in August). Photograph: Kate Holden<\/p>\n It is a dark irony that our most alive fiction is anchored to extinction: the wilder our grief and awe, the wilder our storytelling. Adam Ouston\u2019s new novel, Mine, follows a climate activist trapped at the bottom of an abandoned goldmine and is told in a single, wheeling 278-page sentence (Transit Lounge, August). Johanna Bell\u2019s The Department of the Vanishing<\/a> is the literary equivalent of a murder board (Transit Lounge, March). And then there are the apocalyptic eco-fables: immaculate conception in a feminist utopia (The Endling<\/a> by Keely Jobe, Scribe, March); a virulent rash (Mantle<\/a> by Romy Ash, Ultimo, April); and the wakeful ruins of an alien civilisation (Bird Deity<\/a> by John Morrissey, Text, February).<\/p>\n Eva Hornung, Katherine Johnson, Maria Takolander, Inga Simpson and Sarah Walker all have eco-inflected fiction out this year. And Tim Flannery\u2019s A Brief History of Climate Folly (Text, August), co-written by his daughter Emma Flannery, is stranger than fiction. It collects real-world tales of humanity\u2019s attempts to control the weather \u2013 like Hitler\u2019s plan to drain the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n The cost of livingJordan Prosser, whose second novel Blue Giant follows a hungover millennial on a journey to Mars. Photograph: Sarah Walker<\/p>\n From the housing crisis to the care sandwich: an emerging and caustic theme in Ozlit (and beyond) is late capitalism and financial precarity. Fiona Wright captures the mood with Kill Your Boomers<\/a> (Ultimo, March). Jordan Prosser sends a hungover millennial to Mars in Blue Giant (UQP, August); Ellena Savage follows an anarchist waiter from inner-city Melbourne to a decrepit Greek Island (The Ruiners, Summit, April); Alan Fyfe\u2019s The Cross Thieves<\/a> (Transit Lounge, March), is set in a riverside squat; and George Kemp traps his cast in a regional McDonald\u2019s as a bushfire closes in (Soft Serve<\/a>, UQP, February).<\/p>\n There are nonfiction titles on the theme, too: see Lucinda Holdforth\u2019s Going On and On: Why Longevity Threatens the Future<\/a> (Summit, April), and Matt Lloyd-Cape\u2019s Our Place: How to Fix the Housing Crisis and Build a Better Australia (Black Inc, September).<\/p>\n The art of lifeAngela O\u2019Keeffe, who once wrote a novel told by Jackson Pollock\u2019s Blue Poles, has written a new book told by a paperback novel, titled Phantom Days. Photograph: Mike Bowers\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Our literary obsession with art-makers continues. Wayne Marshall sends Henry Lawson into the multiverse in Henry Goes Bush (Pan Macmillan, May) and Emily Lighezzolo\u2019s paint-speckled debut follows a couple who meet in an art class: she\u2019s the model, he\u2019s an artist (Life Drawing<\/a>, UQP, March). Speaking of paint, Angela O\u2019Keeffe once gave voice to a Jackson Pollock canvas<\/a>; now her new book Phantom Days<\/a> brings a paperback novel to life \u2013 the more it sees, the more it fears for its owner (UQP, May).<\/p>\n And the line between life and art blurs in Debra Adelaide\u2019s autofiction, When I Am Sixty-Four<\/a> (UQP, April). Based on her real-life friendship with the Puberty Blues\u2019 co-author Gabrielle Carey<\/a>, this bruised and generous novel traces what remains \u2013 and what shifts \u2013 when a life, and a creative bond, comes to an end. Australian art-makers star in nonfiction too, with new biographies of the Hobart-born actor Errol Flynn<\/a> (by Patricia A O\u2019Brien, Allen & Unwin, April), the cultural critic Robert Hughes (by Thornton McCamish, Black Inc, November), and the poet AD Hope<\/a> (by Susan Lever, Black Inc, April).<\/p>\n Crime, romance and fantasy<\/p>\n The body count continues to rise in Aussie crime fiction, and the usual suspects are back: Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Candice Fox, Amanda Hampson, JP Pomare, and Michael Robotham \u2013 who delivers his first homegrown noir (Tell Me Something True<\/a>, Hachette, September). Meanwhile, the investigative journalist Louise Milligan\u2019s second novel is out in March (Shellybanks<\/a>, Allen and Unwin).<\/p>\n And we have talent aplenty across the genre spectrum: from meet-cutes (The Paradise Pact<\/a> by Anita Heiss, Simon and Schuster, March), to riotous family megadramas (The Sisterhood Rules<\/a> by Kathy Lette, Bloomsbury, February) and shapeshifting princesses (Songbird of the Sorrows<\/a> by Braidee Otto, Penguin, February). Look out for the Perth author Cameron Sullivan\u2019s debut fantasy novel, The Red Winter<\/a> (Pan Macmillan, March), which is set for a global release this year \u2013 a retelling of the myth of the Beast of G\u00e9vaudan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Non-fiction<\/p>\n Rhetoric and reckonings<\/p>\n Wiradjuri writer Stan Grant, whose new book When Words Fail Us is out in May, pictured in Adelong, NSW. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The former Guardian reporter Amy Remeikis has two books out this year and their titles tell a story on their own: Where It All Went Wrong<\/a> (Scribner, February) and Screw Nice (Hachette, July). The first revisits the Howard years; the second takes aim at the politics of civility and the weaponisation of politeness. Bob Hawke and Anthony Albanese \u2013 and their leadership \u2013 also come under scrutiny in high-profile essay collections (Gold Standard? Revisiting the Hawke Government<\/a> and The First Albanese Government<\/a>, both out with <\/a>NewSouth). And Kate Grenville continues her project of colonial reckoning in Currabubula (Black Inc, October), a tale that begins with a bundle of mysterious letters.<\/p>\n Stan Grant makes the case for attentive silence in When Words Fail Us (NewSouth, May), while the techno-commentator Toby Walsh considers the force reshaping everything else in God AI (Black Inc, September). And fresh from her victory against the ABC<\/a>, Antoinette Lattouf celebrates rule-breakers and history-makers in Women Who Win<\/a> (Penguin, April).<\/p>\n Australian true crime also keeps power in its sights. In Duty to Warn<\/a> (Hachette, January), Charlotte Grieve traces the fallout of her reporting on the disgraced orthopaedic surgeon Munjed Al Muderis. In The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron<\/a> (Simon and Schuster, January), Vikki Petraitis revisits a disappearance that has haunted Australia for decades and examines the biases that warped the investigation.<\/p>\n Wellness and witcheryAustralian comedian and author Judith Lucy, whose upcoming book Well Well Well takes on the wellness industry. Photograph: Token<\/p>\n The title of the year award goes to Lally Katz for her memoir My Cursed Vagina<\/a> (Allen and Unwin, February), which begins with a diagnosis she received from a shopping mall psychic. Judith Lucy samples every tincture and cure \u2013 \u201cfrom ayahuasca to zen\u201d \u2013 as she grapples with the wellness industrial complex in Well Well Well (Scribner, November), while Kaz Cooke explores the ghostly and the gullible in her history of clairvoyants, mediums and magicians\u2019 assistants (Spooky Ladies Being Special, Scribner, October).<\/p>\n In Good Witch Hunting (Summit, July), the Guardian columnist Lucianne Tonti argues that the twisted logic of witch hunting still haunts the present. And, in her essay collection The Ruin of Magic<\/a> (Black Inc, April), Kate Holden looks for forms of real enchantment, from the dark pull of nostalgia to the sustaining light of other storytellers.<\/p>\n Care and community<\/p>\n But if there is a heartbeat to the coming year, it\u2019s the care that binds us together. Blak Love (UQP, October), edited by Daniel Browning and Cheryl Leavy, brings together First Nations writers to examine love in all its tones and textures. Written in the aftermath of his wife\u2019s sudden death, Bob Carr\u2019s memoir Bring Back Yesterday<\/a> (Allen and Unwin, March) draws on five decades of devotion.<\/p>\n