Time Travel for Beginners, a novel by Sydney author Jaclyn Moriarty

Showing all posts about Australian literature

Time Travel for Beginners, a novel by Sydney author Jaclyn Moriarty

8 August 2026

I’ve been talking about time-travel stories recently, so here’s another one, this time a book. Time Travel for Beginners, is the latest novel by Sydney based Australian author Jaclyn Moriarty.

If you can find a shop called the Time Travel Agency, located somewhere in Sydney, then you too may be able to travel through what some people call the fourth dimension:

The guidelines are simple: you can go whenever you wish into the past, and there’s no fear of altering the present. Have tea with Jane Austen, scream at a Beatles concert, witness the Olympics in ancient Greece. Perhaps a more personal trip? Visit your long-lost grandmother, recapture the heady days of your youth, return to the idyllic time when your teen was a babbling baby — or watch yourself make the one decision that changed everything.

Is it a hoax? And if it’s real, what’s the catch?

When single mother Anna is offered a job at the agency, she glimpses the possibility of happiness. Meanwhile, Teddy’s a customer hoping to untangle his recently imploded marriage. And Jade, who has a deeply buried secret, despises the agency for offering false hope.

The line about there being no fear of altering the present (ah, the Grandfather Paradox), reminds me a little of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s 2015 time travel novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

Visitors to a particular cafe in Tokyo, Japan, can, subject to a number of stipulations, travel to the past. They cannot however change anything in the past, and must return to the cafe in the present day before their coffee gets cold. Not too much time to unravel the spacetime continuum there.

Back to Moriarty though. Writing is clearly a talent running through her family. Sisters Liane Moriarty, and Nicola Moriarty, are also accompanied authors.

Fierceland, by Omar Musa, wins 2026 Miles Franklin Award

7 August 2026

Queanbeyan, NSW, based author and visual artist Omar Musa, has been named winner of the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award, for his 2025 novel Fierceland.

Fierceland is Musa’s second novel, and tells the story of two siblings returning to their home in Malaysian Borneo, for their father’s funeral, having lived overseas for years:

After many years abroad, Roz and Harun return to Malaysian Borneo for the funeral of their father Yusuf — and to reckon with their inheritance. A renowned palm-oil baron during Malaysia’s economic rise, Yusuf built the family’s immense wealth by destroying huge tracts of rainforest. What his children know is that he was also responsible for the violent disappearance of a man who stood in his way.

Harun has become a successful tech entrepreneur in Los Angeles, Roz is an artist struggling to stay afloat in Sydney. Now they want to return something their father stole from the forests of their homeland. In their quest for redemption they grapple with the legacy of power and corruption, dreamers and exiles, thugs and zealots. Most dangerous of all, they are haunted — by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself.

The Miles Franklin is awarded annually to Australian novels of the highest literary merit.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award 2026 longlist

25 May 2026

The longlist for the 2026 Miles Franklin award was published on Wednesday 20 May 2026, and includes the following ten titles:

Discipline by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts
Fierceland by Omar Musa
First Name Second Name by Steve MinOn
I Want Everything, Dominic Amerena
Little World by Josephine Rowe
My Heart at Evening by Konrad Muller
Salt Upon the Water by Lyn Dickens
Tenderfoot by Toni Jordan
You Must Remember This by Sean Wilson

Presented annually, the Miles Franklin award recognises Australian novels of the highest literary merit. The shortlist will be announced in June, next month, with the winner being named in August.

If you’re looking for reading ideas, literary award longlists make a good starting place, and are for me, a de-facto TBR list. I need more hours in the day to keep up with the resulting reading though.

Cannon by Lee Lai, becomes first graphic novel to win Stellar Prize

14 May 2026

In winning the 2026 Stellar Prize, Montréal, Canada, based Australian cartoonist Lee Lai becomes the first graphic novelist to claim the Australian literary award, with Cannon.

Lai’s debut graphic novel, Stone Fruit, was shortlisted for the 2022 award, which went on to be won by Evelyn Araluen, with her poetry collection Dropbear.

Dropbear was the first work of poetry to take out the Stellar, and Araluen was in the running for the 2026 award, with The Rot, her follow up collection of poetry.

Wins for Araluen’s Dropbear, and Lai’s Cannon, in the Stellar, are both firsts, and represent a fascinating intertwining of Australian literary award history.

Capture, a new novel by Australian author Amanda Lohrey

7 May 2026

The tenth novel by the Tasmania based author, and previous winner of the Miles Franklin literary award, was published last week:

James Mather is a psychiatrist in his sixties. He is invited to take on a new group of patients. All he knows about them is that each one claims to have been abducted by aliens.

His wife, Deborah, is sceptical, but he gets going anyway. His patients tell mesmerising stories. There’s Anthony, for instance, who was camping one night by the Aral Sea; or Mary, the owner of a beauty salon, confronted by a ball of light moving towards her in her bedroom.

James’s research assistant Lucy Cheng sits in on each session. She’s an attractive young divorcee, who has made a study of anxiety, and who takes notes about each conversation.

With the sci-fi tinge, Capture seems worlds removed — no pun intended — from Lohrey’s 2021 title The Labyrinth, winner of the Miles Franklin that year. But who knows, maybe it isn’t.

Australian author David Malouf dies at age 92

29 April 2026

David Malouf, the Miles Franklin and Booker Prize winning author, died last week, Wednesday 22 April 2026, in the Australian state of Queensland.

If you’re unfamiliar with Malouf’s work, Sydney Morning Herald writer Nell Geraets has complied a list of seven “must-read” Malouf titles.

No basic income for Australian artists, but some writers can live in reduced rent accommodation

14 April 2026

Ireland pays a select group of artists a basic income for a three year period, an initiative the Irish government claims is a world first.

At present, the weekly value of the payment equates to about five-hundred-and-forty Australian dollars. You’d be hard pressed to live on that sort of money in Australia, but it’s better than nothing, considering no such scheme exists locally.

But there is a glimmer of hope. For some local creatives at least. The NSW state government is offering writers the opportunity to rent terrace houses in The Rocks area of Sydney, for two-hundred dollars (Australian) per week.

Spots are limited, and creatives still need a source of income, but the initiative is a (small) step in the right direction. To be eligible, a writer must be considered to be a literature practitioner:

In this instance, ‘Literature Practitioners’ are defined as: writers working in any creative form, including fiction, short stories, screenplay/drama, poetry, children’s books, and narrative non-fiction, and illustrators working in children’s books and graphic novels. The Program is open to NSW Literature Practitioners at any stage of their career.

The Titanic Story of Evelyn, a biography by Lisa Wilkinson

13 April 2026

Evelyn Marsden, a steward and nurse on the Titanic’s doomed 1912 maiden voyage, became known as the only Australian woman to survive the tragic sinking of the ocean liner.

Marsden helped distressed passengers, before eventually being told to get into a lifeboat.

Growing up, Marsden used to row in the Murray River, during family holidays, and would set herself the challenge of rowing against the tide. The skill proved invaluable as she helped row the lifeboat she was aboard, with forty other people, against the pull the sinking Titanic exerted on them.

Marsden was born in Stockyard Creek, South Australia in 1883. After the sinking, she married William James, a doctor who also worked for the White Star Line, owner of the Titanic.

They lived in South Australia for some years before moving to Bondi. Marsden died at age fifty-four in 1938, and is buried in Waverley Cemetery, with her husband, who died a short time afterwards.

Marsden’s life is now the subject of a biography, The Titanic Story of Evelyn, written by Australian TV presenter and journalist, Lisa Wilkinson, which is being published tomorrow, Tuesday 14 April 2026.

The longlist for the 2026 Stella Prize literary award

14 March 2026

Twelve titles have been included on the longlist for this year’s Stella Prize, the Australian literary award recognising the work of women and non-binary writers.

58 Facets: On violence and the law, by Marika Sosnowski
Ankami, by Debra Dank
Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea, by Natalie Harkin
Cannon, by Lee Lai
Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family, by Micaela Sahhar
Fireweather, by Miranda Darling
I Am Nannertgarrook, by Tasma Walton
KONTRA, by Eunice Andrada
Memorial Days, by Geraldine Brooks
The Rot, by Evelyn Araluen
Wait Here, by Lucy Nelson
Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy

Graphic novelist Lee Lai, whose 2021 title, Stone Fruit, was nominated for the 2022 prize, returns to the Stella this year. Poet Evelyn Araluen, as foreshadowed by yours truly, is also included, with her latest work The Rot.

The Stella shortlist will be announced on Wednesday 8 April 2026.

The Rot, by Evelyn Araluen, wins 2026 Victorian Prize for Literature

2 March 2026

Naarm/Melbourne based Australian poet Evelyn Araluen has won both the Victorian Prize for Literature, and Prize for Indigenous Writing, in this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, for her second collection of poetry, The Rot.

Araluen won the Stella Prize, one of Australia’s major literary awards in 2022, for her debut poetry collection, Dropbear. Her win in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards surely puts The Rot in good stead to be awarded the Stella Prize again this year.

That would be quite the accomplishment. We’ll find out soon if the possibility is on the cards, when the longlist for the 2026 Stella is announced next week, on Wednesday 11 March 2026.

« older posts