2024 in Australian literature

This is a list of historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2024.

Events

• Both the chief executive and deputy chairman quit over promotional material released for the 2024 Melbourne Writers Festival
• Major Australian online bookseller Booktopia enters voluntary administration as it explores options for "sale and/or recapitalisation."

Major publications

Literary fiction

• Jumaana Abdu – Translations
• Robbie Arnott – Dusk
• Amy Brown – My Brilliant Sister
• Brian Castro – Chinese Postman
• Shankari Chandran – Safe Haven
• Melanie Cheng – The Burrow
• Charmian Clift – The End of the Morning
• Michelle de Kretser – Theory & Practice
• Winnie Dunn – Dirt Poor Islanders
• David Dyer – This Kingdom of Dust
• Nikki Gemmell – Wing
• Rodney Hall – Vortex
• Dylin Hardcastle – A Language of Limbs
• Anita Heiss – Dirrayawadha
• Kirsty Iltners – Depth of Field
• Julie Janson – Compassion
• Gail Jones – One Another
• Lauren Keegan – All the Bees in the Hollows
• Meg Keneally – Free
• Kate Kruimink – Heartsease
• Siang Lu – Ghost Cities
• Emily Maguire – Rapture
• Alex Miller – The Deal
• Stephen Orr – Shining Like the Sun
• Jock Serong – Cherrywood
• Inga Simpson – The Thinning
• Nardi Simpson – The Belburd
• Tim Winton – Juice

Short story collections

• Ceridwen Dovey – Only the Astronauts
• Fiona McFarlane – Highway 13
• Mykaela Saunders – Always Will Be

Crime and mystery

• Garry Disher – Sanctuary
• Candice Fox – Devil's Kitchen
• Sulari Gentill – The Mystery Writer
• Chris Hammer – The Valley
• Margaret Hickey – The Creeper
• Lisa Kenway – All You Took From Me
• Dervla McTiernan – What Happened to Nina?
• Louise Milligan – Pheasants Nest
• Vikki Wakefield – To the River

Science fiction and Fantasy

• Greg Egan
• "Death and the Gorgon"
• Morphotrophic
• Kate Forsyth – Psyckhe
• Ben Peek – "Shadow Films"
• Angela Slatter – The Briar Book of the Dead
• Kaaron Warren – The Underhistory

Children's and young adult

• Kate Emery – My Family and Other Suspects
• Ambelin Kwaymullina – Liar's Test
• Emma Lord – Anomaly
• Katrina Nannestad – All the Beautiful Things
• Krystal Sutherland – The Invocations
• Lili Wilkinson – Deep is the Fen

Poetry

• Chris Andrews – The Oblong Plot
• Manisha Anjali – Naag Mountain
• Judith Beveridge – Tintinnabulum
• David Brooks – The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems
• Hasib Hourani – rock flight
• Nam Le – 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem
• Jeanine Leane – gawimarra gathering
• Kate Middleton – Television
• Izzy Roberts-Orr – Raw Salt

Plays

• Patricia Cornelius – Bad Boy
• Glenn Shea – Three Magpies Perched in a Tree
• Melanie Tait – The Queen's Nanny
• David Williamson – The Great Divide

Non-Fiction

• James Bradley – Deep Water
• Criss Canning – The Paintings of Criss Canning
• Santilla Chingaipe – Black Convicts
• Helen Ennis – Max Dupain: A Portrait
• Helen Garner – The Season
• Royce Kurmelovs – Slick: Australia's Toxic Relationship with Big Oil
• Amy McQuire – Black Witness
• Cameron K. Murray – The Great Housing Hijack
• Lucia Osborne-Crowley – The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell
• Cher Tan – Peripathetic : Notes on (Un)belonging

Memoir

• Abbas El-Zein – Bullet, Paper, Rock
• Susan Hampton – Anything Can Happen
• Samah Sabawi – Cactus Pear for My Beloved
• Markus Zusak – Three Wild Dogs and the Truth

Awards and honours

Note: these awards were presented in the year in question.

Lifetime achievement

Literary

Fiction

Children and Young Adult

Crime and Mystery

National

Non-Fiction

Poetry

Drama

Deaths

• 13 January – David Hansen, art historian (born 1958)
• 4 February – Lowitja O'Donoghue, public administrator and Indigenous rights advocate (born 1932)
• 19 February – Marion Halligan, novelist, short story writer, reviewer and essayist (born 1940)
• 25 March – Ian Heads, historian and journalist (born 1943)
• 30 April – Lyndall Ryan, historian (born 1943)
• 10 May – Hugh Edwards, journalist, author and marine photographer (born 1933 in Scotland)
• 24 July – Ray Lawler, playwright (born 1921)
• 31 August – Jack Hibberd, playwright (born 1940)
• 4 October – Barbara Blackman, writer, essayist, poet, librettist, broadcaster and philanthropist (born 1928)
• 30 November – Susan Duncan, journalist, memoirist and novelist (born 1951)
• 10 December – Brenda Walker, novelist (born 1957)
• 18 December – John Marsden, writer and teacher (born 1950)

Unknown date

• Eric Beach, poet and playwright (born in New Zealand, 1947)

See also

• 2024 in Australia
• 2024 in literature
• 2024 in poetry
• List of years in Australian literature
• List of years in literature

References