The Australian literary landscape for 2026 is shaping up to be a thrillingly diverse and audacious affair. From novels composed in a single, marathon sentence to memoirs tackling everything from cursed body parts to the wellness industry, the coming year promises a rich harvest for readers.
Fiction: Big Names and Bold Experiments
The year will see established authors taking creative leaps. Amanda Lohrey, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, shifts her focus to outer space in Capture, a novel exploring a psychiatrist's patients who report alien encounters. Meanwhile, acclaimed nonfiction writer Chloe Hooper ventures into the world of the cold war thriller with Lady Spy.
Expect more existential absurdity from Steve Toltz in A Rising of the Lights, and a debut novel from Go-Betweens co-founder Robert Forster, titled Songwriters on the Run. The trend for formally daring work continues with Adam Ouston's Mine, a climate crisis novel told in a single, unbroken 278-page sentence.
Other notable fiction includes Shaun Micallef's playful De'Ath Takes a Holiday, Siang Lu's metafictional take on The Odyssey in Useless Tse, and Debra Adelaide's autofictional exploration of friendship and loss in When I Am Sixty-Four.
Eco-Lit and the Cost of Living
Environmental anxiety and financial precarity emerge as powerful themes. Tim Flannery and his daughter Emma co-write A Brief History of Climate Folly, a nonfiction collection of humanity's misguided attempts to control weather. This is complemented by eco-inflected fiction from authors like Inga Simpson and Katherine Johnson.
The strains of late capitalism are dissected in titles such as Fiona Wright's Kill Your Boomers and Alan Fyfe's squat-set novel The Cross Thieves. Jordan Prosser sends a millennial to Mars in Blue Giant, while George Kemp traps characters in a bushfire-threatened McDonald's in Soft Serve.
Nonfiction: Reckonings, Wellness and Witchery
The nonfiction slate is equally robust, featuring incisive cultural and political commentary. Former Guardian reporter Amy Remeikis releases two books: Where It All Went Wrong, examining the Howard years, and Screw Nice, critiquing the politics of civility. Stan Grant argues for the power of silence in When Words Fail Us.
Following her legal victory against the ABC, Antoinette Lattouf celebrates trailblazers in Women Who Win. The wellness industry comes under scrutiny from comedian Judith Lucy in Well Well Well, and Lally Katz delivers a memoir with the unforgettable title My Cursed Vagina.
True crime also remains a potent force, with Charlotte Grieve's Duty to Warn investigating a disgraced surgeon and Vikki Petraitis revisiting a cold case in The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron.
Ultimately, a thread of care and community weaves through the 2026 list. This is exemplified by the First Nations anthology Blak Love and the remarkable debut The World Belongs to the Children by 89-year-old Raya Goldtwig. The year ahead confirms that Australian literature is as inventive, urgent and compelling as ever.
