Monday musings on Australian literature: Turning 50 in 2026

March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 22 Comments

No, not me, much as I wish it were! I’m talking books. Today being the day after International Women’s Day, I thought to feature women in this week’s Monday Musings. But how? Then I remembered that somewhere last year I’d seen a list of books turning 50, so decided to take inspiration from that and share books by Aussie women which are turning 50 this year, meaning they were published in 1976.

Researching this wasn’t easy. Wikipedia’s 1976 in Australian literature was inadequate, but I have beefed it up somewhat now. It had only one novel by an Australian woman under “Books” and one entry under “Short Stories”. So, I searched Wikipedia for authors I knew of the time and found more titles. I also used Hooton and Heseltine’s Annals of Australian literature (though that was tedious because many of the authors are listed under last name only. Is Bennett female or male, for example? Female I discovered. In she went into Wikipedia’s 1976 page too, but she doesn’t have her own page despite her body of work.)

By the time I finished I had added four novels by Australian women, two short story entries, three poets, another dramatist, and three children’s works. I could have added a few more but time and, to some degree, the work’s significance (or “notability” in Wikipedia’s world), resulted in my stopping where I did. My point in sharing this is not to beat my own drum but to say that it is really important, when we can, to improve Wikipedia’s listings in less populated areas, such as entries for women and other minorities. For all its faults, Wikipedia is a triumph, but it is up to all of us who have the time and skills to keep it that way. End of lesson …

Books turning 50 in 2026

During my research into writers who, I knew, were writing around this time, I checked, for example. Thea Astley. She published 15 novels between 1958 and 1999, but only 2 in the 1970s, neither in 1976. Jessica Anderson published three novels in the 1970s but not in 1976. The same went for Barbara Hanrahan. Now, the lists …

Links on names are to my posts on those authors. I have made some random notes against some of the listings,

Novels

Nancy Cato and Vivienne Rae Ellis, Queen Trucanini: historical fiction, which was of course Cato’s metier. I haven’t read it, but we have moved on in knowledge and thinking so it has very likely been superseded. I haven’t included nonfiction works here, but will mention Cato’s Mister Maloga: Daniel Matthews and his mission, Murray River, 1864–1902, also published in 1976. The mission failed, for various reasons, and I don’t know Cato’s take, but reviewer Leonard Ward praises its detail, and says that “As an historical document Mister Maloga earns a place on the bookshelves of those who have at heart the welfare of the Aboriginal people”. Potentially paternalistic, but Cato did support FN rights in her day.
Helen Hodgman, Blue skies: apparently this novel was translated into German in 2012. I’ve read and enjoyed Tasmanian-born Hodgman, but not this one. (Lisa’s review)
Gwen Kelly, Middle-aged maidens: a new author for me but worth checking out. This, her third novel, was, said the Sydney Morning Herald, “a perceptive portrait of three headmistresses and the staff of an independent girls’ school” and “was considered somewhat controversial in Armidale” where Kelly was living. Her Wikipedia page shares some of the reactions to it, including that it offered a “fierce appraisal of small-town shortcomings … [an] acerbic depiction of a private school for girls in Armidale.” Another was that “the headmistresses’ characters are sketched with sharp and brilliant lines … Gwen Kelly draws from us that complexity of response which is normal in life, rare in literature”, while a third wrote “spiteful, malicious, cunning, intensely readable … Delicious, Ms Kelly … you know your Australia and you’ve a lovely way with words”. Intriguing, eh?
Betty Roland, Beyond Capricorn: I have Betty Roland’s memoir, Caviar for breakfast on my TBR, but still haven’t got to it. For those who don’t know her, she had a relationship with Marxist scholar and activist Guido Baracchi, a founder of the Australian Communist Party. They went to the USSR, and while there, according to Wikipedia, she worked on the Moscow Daily News, shared a room with Katharine Susannah Prichard, and smuggled literature into Nazi Germany. Caviar For Breakfast (1979), the first volume of her autobiography, covers this period.
Christina Stead, Miss Herbert (The suburban wife): Stead needs no introduction (Bill’s review).

Short stories

Glenda Adams, Lies and stories: a story by Adams was in the first book my reading group did – an anthology. It wasn’t this story, but so much did we enjoy the one we read, that we went on to read a novel.
Shirley Hazzard, “A long story short”: published in The New Yorker 26 July 1976 (excerpt from The transit of Venus)
Elizabeth Jolley, Five acre virgin and other stories: for many years this collection was my go-to recommendation for people wanting to try Jolley. It captures so much of her preoccupations, style, and thoughts about writing (including reusing your own material).

Poetry

Stefanie Bennett, The medium and Tongues and pinnacles: prolific and still around but does not have her own page in Wikipedia.
Joanne Burns, Adrenaline flicknife: Burns won the ACT Poetry Prize Judith Wright award, and was shortlisted for and/or won awards in the NSW’s Kenneth Slessor Prize, but not for this collection.
Anne Elder, Crazy woman and other poems: Anne Elder’s name is commemorated in the Anne Elder Award for Poetry.
Judith Wright, Fourth Quarter: Like Stead, Judith Wright needs no introduction – to Australian readers at least.

Drama

This is not my area of interest and not only are plays are best seen, but I think they have an even shorter shelf life. However, a few playwrights were published in 1976, including Dorothy Hewett, who also wrote poetry and novels.

Children’s literature

I won’t list the books here, but most of the authors are well-known to older Australian readers: Hesba Brinsmead, Elyne Mitchell (of The Silver Brumby fame), Ruth Park, Anne Parry (the least known of this group), Joan Phipson, and Eleanor Spence.

Do you have any 50-year-old books in your list of favourites? Several of these authors are important to (and not forgotten by) me, but the book from this year that is the important one is Jolley’s.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 17, Beatrice Grimshaw

March 2, 2026March 2, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 12 Comments

Of all the writers I’ve researched for the AWW project, Beatrice Grimshaw is among the most documented, with articles in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) and Wikipedia, among others. And yet, she is little known today. This post, like most of my recent Forgotten Writers posts, draws on the one I posted on AWW. However, I have abbreviated that post somewhat here to add more commentary.

If you are interested, check out the story I shared on AWW, a romance titled “Shadow of the palm”. It provides a good sense of what she wrote – and why it might have value today, despite its problematic language. It tells of local traditions and lustful dissolute men, of missionaries and young people in love. It is a predictable story typical of its time, but is enlivened by knowledge of a place that was exotic to its readers. It also conveys some of the cultural conflict and exploitation that came with colonialism.

Beatrice Grimshaw

Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw (1870-1953) is described by Wikipedia as “an Irish writer and traveller”, while the ADB does not give a nationality. However, both state that she was born on 3 February 1870 at Cloona, Antrim, in Ireland, and died on 30 June 1953 at Kelso near Bathurst in New South Wales. She is buried in Bathurst cemetery.

Grimshaw, the fourth of six children, was never going to be the little wife and mother. Wikipedia says that she “defied her parents’ expectations to marry or become a teacher, instead working for various shipping companies” while ADB says that, although she went to university, “she did not take a degree and never married but saw herself as a liberated ‘New Woman'”. There is much detail about her life at these two sources so I’ll just share the salient points here. She loved the outdoors, and began her writing career when she became a sports journalist for Irish Cyclist magazine in 1891. Besides working as an editor, she wrote “a range of content including poems, dialogues, short stories, and two serialised novels under a pen name”. Her first novel, Broken away, was published in 1897.

“a fearless character” (HJB)

The early details aren’t fully clear, but from some time after 1891, she worked for various shipping companies in the Canary Islands, the USA and England. Things become clear by 1903 when we know she left for the Pacific to report on the region for the Daily Graphic. She also accepted government and other commissions to write tourist publicity for various Pacific islands and NZ.

In 1907, she returned to Papua, intending to stay for two or three months, having been being commissioned by the London Times and the Sydney Morning Herald as a travel writer, but ended up living there for most of the next twenty-seven years. She wrote, joined expeditions up rivers and into the jungles, managed a plantation (1917-22), and established a short-lived tobacco plantation with her brother (1934). She played a key role in the development of tourism in the South Pacific.

Due to recurring malaria fever, she moved to Kelso in 1936 to live with her brothers. She didn’t retire, however. She continued to write books, and undertake other work, including, according to Broken Hill’s Barrier Daily Truth (12 Feb 1943) “liaison work for the Americans in Australia … She said that Australia offers unlimited opportunities for expansion, opportunities which the American people will be quick to utilise”.

Grimshaw was a prolific and best-selling writer, with over 35 novels to her name. She drew from her experiences in the South Seas, and wrote in the popular genres of the time – romantic adventure, crime fiction and some supernatural or ghost stories. The Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser (3 July 1940) reported that many of her novels and short stories had been “translated into German, French, Danish and Swedish” and that her books were “known throughout England, America and Australia”. She also wrote numerous articles and short stories for papers and journals. Her 1922 novel, Conn of the Coral Seas, was made into a film, The Adorable Outcast, in 1928.

She was quite the celebrity, for her adventurous life as well as for her writing. After all, as The Australian Women’s Weekly (Feb 1935) pointed out, she had lived amongst “headhunters”, no less! Her writing was frequently praised for its realism, with a reviewer in Adelaide’s The Register writing (9 Sept 1922) identifying “two outstanding features of her writing” as:

her understanding of human nature, and her power of description. There is no need to illustrate her books. Her own words conjure up pictures as accurate as they are enchanting …

Some though were more measured, like the writer in The Queenslander (4 Mar 1922) who admired her storytelling but was “forced to wonder if the beautiful islands hold nothing but hatred and dark intrigue”. That though, was surely her genre more than the truth speaking!

Nonetheless, for modern readers her writing is problematic. We can’t, as Byrne writes, overlook “her paternalistic and occasionally racist attitudes” in her fiction and her journalistic writing. Take her reference to Japanese divers as “little yellow men” (The Australian Women’s Weekly 1940) or this much earlier one on Papuans:

The native is willing to work—unlike the Pacific Islander—and a good fellow when well treated. His interests are being thoughtfully cared for, and he is governed with honesty and justice. (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1907)

And yet, if you read this SMH article, you will gain an impression of the liveliness of her observations, which brings me to why she is worth reading. Her writing is a valuable historical source. She wrote a lot, in depth, and with excellent powers of observation about the Pacific, and in doing so conveys information about the life of European settlers, along with the values, beliefs, and attitudes they had. It has to be gold for anyone researching that time and place.

AustLit notes that she was, in her day, “sometimes favourably compared with Joseph Conrad, Bret Harte and Robert Louis Stevenson”, but that she is out of print today. More interestingly, the Oxford Companion shares that researcher Susan Gardner concluded that she “was made up of contradictions” including that “between her explicit anti-feminism and her feminist career”. A most fascinating, forgotten woman.

Sources

HJB, “At home with Beatrice Grimshaw, Novelist”, Sydney Mail (9 December 1931) [Accessed: 10 February 2026]
Angela Bryne, “Beatrice Grimshaw: The Belfast explorer treated as a male chief on Samoa“, The Irish Times (5 March 2019) [Accessed: 2 March 2026]
Beatrice Grimshaw, AustLit (Accessed: 8 February 2026]
Beatrice Grimshaw, Wikipedia [Accessed: 7 February 2026]
Hugh Laracy, ‘Grimshaw, Beatrice Ethel (1870–1953)‘, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University, 1983 [Accessed: 7 February 2026]
William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews, The Oxford companion to Australian literature. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2nd, edition, 1994

All other sources are linked in the article.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Walter Scott Prize

February 23, 2026February 23, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 52 Comments

Some of you will have come across the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction already. Brona (This Reading Life) recently posted on it, and I have mentioned it in passing a few times on this blog. Wikipedia provides good overview, as does the Prize’s own website, so I am sharing information from both these sites.

It is a British literary award that was founded in 2010 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch whose ancestry includes Sir Walter Scott. He is generally accepted to be, as Wikipedia puts it, “the originator of historical fiction” with his 1814 novel Waverley (see my post on Volume 1). Its prize money of £30,000 makes it one of the UK’s largest literary awards. Eligible books must be first published in the UK, Ireland or Commonwealth and must, of course, be historical fiction, which, says Wikipedia, they define as fiction in which “the main events take place more than 60 years ago, i.e. outside of any mature personal experience of the author”. As the Prize website explains, the 60 years comes from Waverley’s subtitle, Or, sixty years since.

You will now, I’m sure, have gleaned its relevance for Monday Musings, which is that because Australia is of the Commonwealth, books by Australian authors are eligible. Over the years of the prize, Australian novels have been long- and shortlisted. So, I thought to share them here – to give them another airing, and to identify their main subject matter. Have any topics been more popular than others, I wondered? Let’s see …

Walter Scott Prize Australian shortlistees (2010-2025)

While the prize was first awarded in 2010, an Australian book was not shortlisted until 2013. Perhaps some were longlisted before that (and since), but I can’t see longlists on the Prize’s website, and it would take some gleaning to track them down.

2013: Thomas Keneally, The daughters of Mars: World War 1, and Australian nurses (Kimbofo’s review, with links to other bloggers)
2016: Lucy Treloar, Salt Creek: mid-19th century South Australia, farming struggles and First Nations tensions (Brona’s review)
2017: Hannah Kent, The good people: early 19th century Ireland, and “changelings”
2019: Peter Carey, A long way from home: 1950s Australia seen through the lens of the Redex Car Trials (Kimbofo’s review, on my TBR)
2021: Kate Grenville, A room made of leaves: early 19th century Australia (the Sydney settlement) imagined through the eyes of Elizabeth Macarthur (Brona’s review)
2021: Pip Williams, The dictionary of lost words: early 20th century England, imagining a woman’s contribution to the OED (Brona’s review)
2021: Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate: World War 2 (1941), and a German medical unit at the Tolstoy Estate: (my review)
2023: Fiona McFarlane, The sun walks down: late 19th century South Australia, lost child story involving many people, including famers, cameleers and First Nations trackers (Brona’s review)

So far, an Australian hasn’t won, but my, what a showing we had in 2021! As for setting, there’s little concentration – in this tiny sample – on any one time or place. South Australia appears twice, and four of the eight are set in the 19th century. Given none of the authors are First Nations, a couple of the stories include First Nations people, but their history is not the focus. Three of the stories – by Kent, Williams and Conte – are not set in Australia. If there is any one idea coming through, it is that of restoring the role of women in historical events or, simply, in life. This is not surprising given that one of the values of historical fiction, according to American historian Steven Mintz*, is that it

can offer a more inclusive portrait of the past, recover and develop stories that have been lost or forgotten and foreground figures and dissenting and radical perspectives that were relegated to history’s sidelines.

And we all know that women, just one among many groups of disempowered people, were/still are ignored by “history”. This recovery of lost stories – this deeper and wider exploration of history, and all its byways, that the proverbial victors ignored – is why I have come to enjoy historical fiction, a genre I wasn’t much interested in for a long time.

The 2026 longlist has been announced, and it features another Australian work, Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie (my review). It is a good and significant read, and it would be excellent to see it become the first First Nations Australian shortlistee.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on historical fiction and/or this particular prize, or for you to just name a favourite historical novel. Over to you …

* An aside: I didn’t know who Steven Mintz was, but he has a Wikipedia page. I also found this intriguing commentary on his departure from Inside Higher Ed (which is where I found the statement above). He sounds like a thoughtful, decent guy, but he is in his 70s, so I don’t blame him for wanting to move into a quieter life.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Trove treasures (16), Garrulity and Gracelessness in AusLit

February 16, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 30 Comments

Help Books Clker.com — (Courtesy OCAL, via clker.com)

Another post in my Monday Musings subseries called Trove Treasures, in which I share stories or comments, serious or funny, that I come across during my Trove travels.

Today’s story popped up during my research for a post on Beatrice Grimshaw for the Australian Women Writers blog. It stunned me, and I had to share it. It is, ostensibly, a review in the Sydney Morning Herald (25 July 1953) of a new-to-me Ruth Park novel, A power of roses. The review is titled, pointedly, “A power of women”, and the author, S.J.B., does not mean this as a compliment.

It opens with:

THE visitor from abroad venturing into these barbarian lands for the first time might be pardoned for concluding that women have an almost unbreakable grip on fiction in Australia.

“These barbarian lands”? And visitors need to be “pardoned” for thinking women have the upper hand in Australian fiction? Oh, the horror.

S.J.B. then says that “this domination” had “become increasingly evident” in recent months, with novels, “varying in quality from the excellent to the ordinary”, appearing in rapid succession from “Eleanor Dark, Kylie Tennant, Ruth Park, Dymphna Cusack, Elyne Mitchell, Dorothy Lucie Sanders, Helen Heney, Marjorie Robertson and Maysie Greig”.

He continues:

This flourishing femininity is not exactly new. For the past half century or so, our literature has been notable (if that is the right term) for its women contributors.

If “notable” is the right word to describe women’s strong role in Australian literature? He lists these “women contributors” as “Mrs. Campbell Praed, Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, G. B. Lancaster, Henry Handel Richardson, Miles Franklin, Beatrice Grimshaw, Ernestine Hill, Mary Grant Bruce, Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Marjorie Barnard, Flora Eldershaw, Katharine S. Prichard, Mary Mitchell, Eve Langley”. He is right, women had played a major role in Australian literature in the first half of the century, as this impressive list – representing a significant legacy – shows. Many of these writers are still read, and respected, today.

But, this long introduction to his review gets worse, because he then suggests that these writers “may go some way towards explaining why our fiction is somewhat distinguished for its garrulity, its repetitiveness, its attention to inessentials, its false humour, and its gracelessness” [my emph]. What? Who was saying all this!

However, he admits that this long list of women writers

does not explain why our male writers make such a poor showing. Can it be that Australian men are so occupied with keeping wolves from the door that only their little women [my emph] have time to write?

Perhaps breadwinning plays some role, he says, but he thinks something more is going on:

We note, for example, that in so far as Australian men are active in writing, they tend to concern themselves with social documentation – they record and interpret rather than invent.

The reason? Perhaps the fact is that Australian men lack an ability to sustain imaginative flights and the resolute patience necessary for putting a novel together. Whatever the solution, our male novelists are grievously outnumbered.

And whatever the reason, it’s interesting that it was around this time that things started to change, for the men. Patrick White’s much admired fourth novel, The tree of man, was published in 1955, and during the 1950s other “serious” male writers appeared like Martin Boyd, Randolph Stow and others.

But, back to S.J.B. … Having made these points, he finally gets to his review of A power of roses, to which he gives three small paragraphs. The novel is, he says, “in the tradition of squalor, sentiment and grotesquerie that Miss Park has made distinctively her own”, and then quotes Odysseus’ complaint about hearing the same story twice. He concludes:

Book reviewers are expected to be more tolerant. But even the most generous reviewer cannot help feeling that Miss Park’s grime, bug-infested rooms’ and poverty-stricken ratbags have lost much of their novelty as subjects for fiction. We have had it all before-and better – in The Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange.

At least he does think those two books written by a woman are good.

I have quoted heavily from the article because, while paraphrasing would have conveyed the meaning, the actual words have a “power” I had to share. As for who S.J.B. is I have not been able to ascertain. AustLit lists S.J.B. as an author of some newspaper articles, but all it can tell me is “gender unknown”. “S.J.B.” does not appear in its list of pseudonyms, which rather confirms that they don’t know who this person is, despite the fact that S.J.B. wrote several articles around this time.

Comments?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Precarity and Late Capitalism

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 21 Comments

Over the years I have written posts about and reviews of books with strong socioeconomic underpinnings. In the nineteenth century these novels tended to be described as Social Novels (and I am have just an English one for reading group, review coming) or were seen under the banner of the Realist movement. In the early to mid twentieth century, books dealing with these concerns were seen as part of the Social Realism movement. I’m playing a bit loose here, because I don’t intend to get into the weeds about definitions. I simply want to note that these novels, to quote Wikipedia’s article on Social Realism, aim to explore the “socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind these conditions”. I have written at least two Monday Musings about writing in this area, one on Factory Novels and one on Realism and Modernism, but the issues have popped up frequently in individual reviews too.

In recent years, new terms have entered the popular sociopolitical lexicon, and these include “precarity” and “late capitalism”. Precarity, with its focus on the lack of job security and all the social and psychological ills that flow from this, may be a relatively new term in sociopolitical discussion, but its broader meaning encompassing the idea of living precarious lives, has underpinned most nineteenth and early twentieth century “Social” and “Realist” novels.

Similarly, Late Capitalism is a complex “term” with a history going back many decades, but is popping up increasingly frequently across all types of writing. Wikipedia covers it in detail, but I’m using one definition from PhD student David Espinoza at the University of Sydney (2022). If you are interested, you can read more at both sites. Basically, Espinoza says that the term wasn’t taken up widely until Belgian Marxist economist Ernest Mandel’s treatise on the topic was published in English in 1975. Espinoza says that

Mandel used the idea to describe the economic expansion after the second world war … a time characterised by the emergence of multinational companies, a growth in the global circulation of capital and an increase in corporate profits and the wealth of certain individuals, chiefly in the West.

For Mandel, “late capitalism” is not so much a change in what capitalism is as “expansion and acceleration in production and exchange”. He says that “one of the main features of late capitalism is the increasing amounts of capital investments into non-traditional productive areas, such as the expansion of credit”. Espinoza says late capitalism is behind the increasing number of financial or economic crises we have had since the 1970s.

There is more, but this is the essence. It’s a bit loosey-goosey I know, but I’m not an expert in economics. However, I hope this is accurate enough and makes enough sense for our needs.

Now, last week’s Monday Musings was inspired by critic/artistic director/literary judge Beejay Silcox’s article in The Guardian on new Australian releases. As I wrote in that post, Silcox grouped the releases under headings. One was “Eco-lit flourishes”, which I discussed last week because it’s an area that interests me. Another area of interest also caught my eye, the one she called “The cost of living”. It inspired this post. Don’t worry, I am not going to go through her whole article in this way. That would be too cheeky for words!

Precarity and Late Capitalism in Australian fiction

I don’t want to repeat the books I included in those previous Monday Musings, but I will name a handful of other Australian novels (and short satires) that I’ve read that encompass these issues (though probably the most searing fictional critique I’ve read recently is Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road):

Donna M. Cameron, The rewilding (my review): capitalism and its impact on climate
Julie Koh, Portable curiosities (my review): satirical short stories which skewer multiple aspects of capitalist culture, including housing and banking
Paddy O’Reilly, Other houses (my review): social mobility and the desire to provide better opportunities for children
Heather Rose, Bruny (my review): satire, on globalised capital, and the conspiracies and political corruption that ensue

These books show there are many ways in which contemporary authors approach this topic, from a more traditional working-class novel (like Paddy O’Reilly’s) through to thrillers and eco-literature, and that satire is still alive as a means to expose the extremes. I would also argue that many of the recent novels by First Nations Australian writers, like Melissa Lucashenko, encompass responses to the depredations of late capitalism.

Now to Beejay Silcox’s list of what is coming in 2026. She introduced this section with the statement that “From the housing crisis to the care sandwich: an emerging and caustic theme in Ozlit (and beyond) is late capitalism and financial precarity”. As with my Eco-literature post, I will dot point the books she lists, in alphabetical order by author, for simplicity’s sake, but will include any description she provided:

Alan Fyfe, The cross thieves: “set in a riverside squat”, Transit Lounge, March, on my TBR
George Kemp, Soft serve: “traps his cast in a regional McDonald’s as a bushfire closes in”, UQP, February, on my TBR
Jordan Prosser, Blue giant: “sends a hungover millennial to Mars”, UQP, August
Ellena Savage, The ruiners: “follows an anarchist waiter from inner-city Melbourne to a decrepit Greek Island”, Summit, April
Fiona Wright, Kill your Boomers: “captures the mood”! Harumph, says this Boomer, watching her back (though, having children, I do understand), Ultimo, March

For the record, Silcox also names a couple of nonfiction titles on the theme: Lucinda Holdforth’s Going on and on: Why longevity threatens the future (Summit, April), and Matt Lloyd-Cape’s Our place: How to fix the housing crisis and build a better Australia (Black Inc, September).

Can you recommend any standout books you’ve read about contemporary precarity and late capitalism? Doesn’t have to be Australian. I’d love to hear.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Invasion Day/Australia Day (2026)

January 26, 2026January 29, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 31 Comments

It’s Monday, and I did have a post planned, until I remembered that this Monday has a very particular date, 26th January. So, I decided to postpone that post in order to make a brief statement about this date which, for many decades, has been designated Australia Day. And we have a public holiday in its honour. The problem is that this day – 26th January – commemorates the 1788 landing at Sydney Cove of Arthur Phillip and his First Fleet and the raising of the flag of Great Britain to establish a penal colony in Britain’s name. In so doing, Britain effectively invaded Australia. (On what legal basis this happened, there is discussion, but the legalities are a distraction from the fact that the British occupied land, that was already occupied, as their own.)

Although Australia Day has been a much loved day, not all Australians have been oblivious to its origins and implications. Wikipedia’s article on the Day provides a brief history of some of this recognition. For example, in 1888, before the first centennial anniversary of the First Fleet’s arrival, Henry Parkes, New South Wales’s premier at the time, was asked about including Aboriginal people in the celebrations. He apparently replied: “And remind them that we have robbed them?” (from Calla Wahlquist and Paul Karp in The Guardian, 2018)

Wikipedia also summarises the history of First Nations people’s response to the Day, including their identifying the 150th anniversary celebrations in 1938 as an Aboriginal Day of Mourning. By the nation’s Bicentennial in 1988, they were framing the day as Invasion Day. Since then, this idea has increasingly taken hold among not only First Nations but many other Australians. With the rise of social media, hashtags like “invasionday and “changethedate have appeared and have also gained traction. Momentum is building.

So, where do I stand? I love Australia, and am very glad to be Australian. I would, therefore, like to celebrate our nation in some way on some day BUT I do not think January the 26th is the day to do it. Consequently, I am with the #changethedate proponents. And, I believe it will come. The voices are rising, and increasingly more Australians are feeling uncomfortable about celebrating a day that feels dishonest and that disrespects and brings pain to the country’s first peoples. We can find another date – that is not hard. We just have to do it.

POSTSCRIPT (28/1/2026): I fear I spoke too soon re change coming. According to a report in The Conversation, there has been little change in numbers supporting a date change. In 2021, around 38% of Australians agreed Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26, while just over 60% disagreed. By late 2025, those figures were around the same, with 37% opposing the date and 62% supporting its retention. But, the worrying thing is that, also according to the report, there has been an increase in the strength of opposition to changing the date. That is a worry for those of us who believe change is a necessary part of the reconciliation journey.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Eco-literature, Redux

January 19, 2026January 19, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

Nearly five years ago, I wrote a Monday Musings on a branch of writing dubbed “eco-literature”. Since then I have reviewed a few works that I have tagged “eco-literature“, including, just yesterday, Jessica White’s collection of essays, Silence is my habitat: Ecobiographical essays. Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago, critic/artistic director/literary judge Beejay Silcox sent me a link to her article in The Guardian on new Australian releases. In it, she grouped the releases under headings, one of which was “Eco-lit flourishes”. So, I thought, why not do a little update …

In that first Musings, I started with definitions, including one from Wikipedia, but it was limited to “ecofiction” (as were a few other sources I cited). Five years on, Wikipedia still doesn’t have an article on “eco-literature”. This is a bit surprising, as I do think it is a much broader church, as does The Wire’s Rajesh Subramanian, whom I quoted in that previous post. He asked in 2017 whether “Eco-Literature” could be “the Next Major Literary Wave”, and defined it as encompassing

the whole gamut of literary works, including fiction, poetry and criticism, which lay stress on ecological issues. Cli-fi (climate fiction), which deals with climate change and global warming, is logically a sub-set of eco-literature.

Five years on, I think we could say it is an established field in contemporary literature – and that it does compass all those forms Subramanian lists, and more (like essays, for example).

Indeed, I’d argue that it is so established that there are bona-fide sub-categories, if not sub-sub categories (such as cli-fi or climate fiction being a sub-category of eco-fiction which itself would be a sub-category of eco-literature).

Eco-literature in Australia

So, if I look at the Australian works I have categorised as eco-literature over the last five years, they include a work of literary fiction, Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost (my review), two works in the crime genre, Donna Cameron’s Rewilding (my review) and Shelley Burr’s Vanish (my review), and Jessica White’s book of essays. Other books which I haven’t tagged, but should have, include First Nations books, because the land, and our use and (mostly rapacious) treatment of it, is never far from the story being told, whether it be fiction, like Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie (my review) or nonfiction, like Debra Dank’s We come with this place (my review).

This is a tiny and narrow selection of what is being written, but it provides some sense of the variety out there, as does Beejay Silcox’s list of what is coming in 2026. She opens this section of her article with “It is a dark irony that our most alive fiction is anchored to extinction: the wilder our grief and awe, the wilder our storytelling”. I will dot point the books she lists, for simplicity’s sake, but will include any description she provided:

Romy Ash, Mantle: one of the three “apocalyptic eco-fables”, Silcox identifies, this one about “a virulent rash”, Ultimo, April
Johanna Bell’s The Department of the Vanishing: documentary poetry/archival image/verse, “the literary equivalent of a murder board”, Transit Lounge, March, on my TBR
Tim and Emma Flannery’s A brief history of climate folly: nonfiction, “stranger than fiction. It collects real-world tales of humanity’s attempts to control the weather – like Hitler’s plan to drain the Mediterranean”, Text, August
Keely Jobe’s The endling: the second of the three “apocalyptic eco-fables”, this one about “immaculate conception in a feminist utopia”, Scribe, March
John Morrissey, Bird deity: the third of the three “apocalyptic eco-fables”, this one about “the wakeful ruins of an alien civilisation”, Text, February, on my TBR
Adam Ouston‘s Mine: novel, which “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

Silcox also named other authors bringing out “eco-inflected fiction” this year. I have added the titles, where I know them: Eva Hornung’s The minstrels, Katherine Johnson, Inga Simpson, Maria Takolander and Sarah Walker.

The thing about eco-literature, perhaps more than most other forms or genres, is that its very nature implies a desire to effect change. Regarding this, I found an article written in 2023* which surveyed readers of eco-crime fiction. Their starting point was “whether narratives can persuade readers to reflect on and perhaps reconsider their own moral beliefs”, and their reader-response research focused on investigating “how Australian readers respond to works of Australian eco-crime fiction that portray non-humans and global ecological issues such as climate change in a local Australian context”. They concluded:

One potentially restrictive element of eco-crime fiction in terms of its potential to engage readers with pro-environmental understandings is the dark and confronting atmosphere of most of these texts. Crime fiction by nature is grim. Add to this an emphasis on catastrophic ecological crises and the connections between such crises and violent crime, and there is a strong possibility that such texts may not do much to convince people that positive change is possible. It is significant that this hopelessness may actually be a deterrent for some readers to engage with climate action in the real world.

Oh dear! And, presumably dystopian eco-fiction would generate a similar response? But maybe not all types of eco-literature?

So, over to you. Do you read “eco-literature”? And if so, what sort do you read and does it encourage you to take action?

* Rachel Fetherston, Emily Potter, Kelly Miller, Devin Bowles, “Seeking greener pages: An analysis of reader response to Australian eco-crime fiction” in Australian Humanities Review, Iss. 71, (May 2023): 1-21.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Why festivals?

January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

I did have another plan for today’s Monday Musings, but it seemed wrong to ignore the elephant in the room, that is, the dire situation facing the Adelaide Festival’s Writers Week. Australians will not need me to explain what has happened, but for those of you not across the events, I’ll briefly explain.

The Adelaide Writers Week is one part of the wide-ranging Adelaide Festival, which is a significant Australian cultural event and which attracts visitors from around Australia and the world. This year’s Writers Week is (was) due to begin on 28 February, but is now in complete disarray because over 100 writers have withdrawn their participation after the Board removed Palestinian Australian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah from the line-up on the grounds of “cultural sensitivity” in the wake of December’s Bondi Massacre. (She was to speak on her debut adult novel, Discipline, which appeared in my report on favourite reads of 2025.) The Board stated that:

Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s [sic] or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, given her past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi. (from Adelaide Festival website)

Hmmm … This follows the furore that occurred last August when multiple authors, including Randa Abdel-Fatteh, withdrew from the Bendigo Writers Festival after the festival adopted a code of conduct which, among other things, required participants to “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive or disrespectful.” The withdrawing writers rejected this stifling of their freedom of expression. (See the excellent The Conversation piece linked below.)

I am not going to discuss this issue in detail because you can read about it at The Conversation, and other online sites that are covering the situation as it unfolds. I don’t need to add my voice to the chorus, except to say that I am a librarian by training, and freedom of expression is one of the tenets of our profession. I want to see respectful – thoughtful – discussion on the big issues we are facing.

So instead, I’m going to share a few Australian articles and posts on writers festivals and their value.

For writers, festivals are not, as readers might expect, a source of stellar sales. Apparently, only the top name writers tend to sell well at festivals*. But, according to writer and authorpreneur (!) Anna Featherstone, festivals offer writers a whole bunch of benefits. And she lists many of them, from the practical opportunities that come from networking to the stimulation and inspiration that can come from being with other writes and readers. She’s a big advocate, and points to festivals like the Byron Bay Writers Festival and the Romance Writers Australia Conference. In fact, early writers festivals were primarily for and attended mainly by writers.

The writers festival as a wider community phenomenon is a relatively recent development. However, my sense is that no matter how different festivals are, or how big or small, this networking aspect with its many-pronged possibilities, is still of value to many writers. In 2024, Kill Your Darlings asked “publishing industry folk” to share “some of the unexpected and useful things they’ve learned along the way about writers’ festivals”. Most of these people were writers, and while they offer a wide variety of advice, the one that appeared most frequently was to encourage writers to take the opportunity to talk to other writers.

But, it is the cultural value of writers festivals that has seen their stunning rise in popularity over the last couple of decades, a rise that has resulted in regional town after regional town establishing their own festival. Some have gone on to become well established events.

There are many articles and posts on this aspect of festivals, but Queensland’s Storyfest has a lovely succinct piece on “The role of writers festivals in shaping our communities”. And, in particular, they say this:

As an arena of intellectual debate, a platform to express opinions – literary, political, and otherwise – and a place where an increasingly varied group of people congregate, it is only natural that literary festivals have a role in politics too. As political platforms, writers’ festivals give attendees the opportunity to engage with thoughtful, mediated conversations and to learn new ideas from fresh, often authentic sources.

[…]

As such, writers’ festivals have grown to be events that contribute to the wider public’s engagement in issues and ideas of broader interest to society. Their role is no longer merely to connect readers and writers … While writers still use these events to meet other writers, readers, and to network, these festivals have grown in function and duties over the last couple of decades. This has expanded the purpose of literature festivals, making them play a significant role in local and international politics too.

This gels with what I look for in a festival. I mostly avoid the “big author” sessions and go for those where I think I’ll be confronted by some different ideas or ways of seeing, where I might be made to feel uncomfortable (in a respectful way!) These sessions are not always easy to find but at the recent Canberra Writers Festival I did find some.

And now, let’s return to the Adelaide Writers Week. I found a blog post written in 2024 by author and blogger Anne Green (of Eating My Words). Her post is titled “Literary Festivals: The good, the bad and the ugly”. It covers all the issues I had dot-pointed for including here (including the tourist potential for small towns, and the “elitism” critique of festivals). It also has a significant focus on Adelaide Writers Week, and its history. It’s a well-researched, comprehensive post that made me realise I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel here!

So, instead, I will close on a quote from another site, writes4women, which struck me – forcefully:

Writing festivals are a reflection of where our country is at any given moment.

That’s a worry!

* See Melanie Joosten at the Kill Your Darlings link.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Some New Releases in 2026

January 3, 2026January 4, 2026 / Whispering Gums / 23 Comments

For some years now, my first Monday Musings of the year has comprised a selected list of new Australian book releases for the coming year. For many years, the bulk of this post came from a comprehensive list prepared by Jane Sullivan for the Sydney Morning Herald. Last year that changed to something more selective, and this year, I think it is similar, but is paywalled.

So, this year the research is all mine, mainly from publisher websites, but also from a couple of other sources like publisher emails. The sources varied in how well and thoroughly they shared their forthcoming titles, and many only cover the early part of the year, as you can tell from my list.

Links on the authors’ names are to my posts on those authors.

Fiction

As always, I have included some but not all the genre fiction I found to keep the list manageable and somewhat focused, and I have not included books for younger readers. Here’s my selection:

Debra Adelaide, When I am sixty-four (March, UQP): based on Adelaide’s friendship with Gabrielle Carey
Romy Ash, Mantle (April, Ultimo Press)
Johanna Bell, Department of the Vanishing (March, Transit Lounge)
Bridie Blake, The boyfriend clause (March, Text): debut novel (romance)
Brendan Colley, The season for flying saucers (April, Transit Lounge)
Abby Corson, Happy woman (April, Ultimo Press): cosy crime
Amanda Curtin, Six days (August, Upswell)
Alan Fyfe, The cross thieves (March, Transit Lounge)
Sulari Gentill, Chasing Odysseus (The Hero Trilogy, Book 1, plus Books 2 & 3) (May, Ultimo Press)
Robert Gott, The winter murders (latest in the Seasonal Murders) (August, Scribe)
Christine Gregory, The informant (May, Ultimo Press)
Victoria Hannan, I love the whole world! (August, Penguin)
Anita Heiss, The paradise pact (March, Simon and Schuster): First Nations
Eva Hornung, The minstrels (March, Text)
Ian Kemish, Two islands (February, UQP): debut novel
George Kemp, Soft serve (February, UQP): debut novel
Emily Lighezzolo, Life drawing (March, UQP)
Laure McPhee-Browne, Worry doll (June, Scribe)
Melissa Manning, Frogsong (March, UQP)
Sean Micallef, DeAth takes a holiday (March, Ultimo Press)
Jaclyn Moriarty, Time travel for beginners (August, Ultimo Press)
John Morrissey, Bird deity (February, Text): First Nations
Angela O’Keeffe, Phantom days (April, UQP)
Ellena Savage, The ruiners (no date, Summit)
Bobuq Sayed, No god but us (May, Ultimo Press): debut novel
M.L. Stedman, A far-flung life (March, Penguin)
Olivia Tolich, Side character energy (February, Text): debut novel (romance)
Steve Toltz, A rising of the lights (April, Penguin)
Sita Walker, In a common hour (January, Ultimo Press)
Dave Warner, Sound mind dead body (no date, Fremantle Press)
Fiona Wilkes, I remember everything (no date, Fremantle Press)
Chloe Wilson, The turnbacks (May, Penguin): debut novel
Michael Winkler, Griefdogg (March, Text)
Fiona Wright, Kill your boomers (March, Ultimo Press)

There are a few familiar names here, including some from whom we’ve not heard for a while (like Eva Hornung, Amanda Curtin and Romy Ash) and others who have published in other forms but are making their novel debuts (like Chloe Wilson).

Short stories

None that I saw.

Nonfiction

Divided into two broad categories …

Life-writing (loosely defined)

Cynthia Banham, Mother shadow: A meditation on maternal inheritance (April, Upswell)
Clara Brack, The secret landscapes: On not pleasing your mother (April, Upswell)
Valerie A Brown, The girl on the roof: The life of a change-maker (June, Scribe)
David Carlin and Peta Murray, How to dress for old age (February, Upswell)
Rosalie Ham, Look after your feet (April, Allen & Unwin)
Kate Holden, The ruin of magic: Longing and belonging in strange times (April, Black Inc)
Susan Lever, A.D. Hope: A life (March, La Trobe University Press/Black Inc)
Linda Martin, A tale of two publishing houses: A behind-the-scenes look into the publishing industry (April, Fremantle Press)
Jim Morrison, Tony Hansen, Alan Carter and Steve Mickler (ed), Why weren’t we told? (November, Upswell): First Nations stolen generation stories
Patrick Mullins, The stained man: a crime, a scandal, and the making of a nation (April, Scribe)
Lisa Wilkinson, The Titanic story of Evelyn (April, Hachette)
Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Hell days (September, Scribe)

History and other non-fiction

Julie Andrews, Where’s all the community? Aboriginal Melbourne revisited (March, Black Inc): First Nations
Danielle Clode, The enigmatic echidna: Secrets of the world’s most curious creature (May, Black Inc)
Michael Dulaney, Sentinels: how animals warn us of disease (August, Scribe)
Peter Hartcher, The Age of Carnivores: How Australia can navigate the new global order (March, Black Inc)
Andrew Leigh, The shortest history of innovation (February, Black Inc)
Martin McKenzie-Murray, Sirens: Inside the shadow world of first responders (April, Black Inc)
Ross McMullin, The light on the hill: An updated history of the Australian Labor Party (June, Scribe)
Desmond Manderson, High time: How Australia changed its mind about illegal drugs (April, La Trobe University Press/Black Inc)
Murray Pittock, The shortest history of Scotland (February, Black Inc)
Erin Vincent, Fourteen ways of looking (March, Upswell)

Poetry

Finally, for poetry lovers, I found these from publisher websites:

Beverley Farmer, For the seasons: Haikus (February, Giramondo): posthumous publication
Susan Fealy, The deer woman (May, Upswell)
Toby Fitch, Or, an autobiography (March, Upswell)
Yvette Henry Holt, Fitzroy North 3068 (May, Upswell)
Kristen Lang , [re]turn: love notes from the mountain (February, Upswell)
Caitlin Maling, Midwest (September, Upswell)
Maria van Neerven, Two tongues (February, UQP): First Nations
Dženana Vucic, after war (April, UQP)

So far I have read only two from my 2025 lists, one less than I had last year, but I have several on the TBR. Will I finish those, and how will I go this year?

PS I published this on Saturday NOT Monday by mistake! Oh well, you get my list early. If I find more titles I will add them.

Meanwhile, anything here interest you?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Favourite books 2025, Pt 2: Nonfiction

December 29, 2025December 30, 2025 / Whispering Gums / 28 Comments

Last Monday, I shared the favourite Fiction and Poetry books that had been chosen by various critics and commentators in a select number of sources. I haven’t always shared the nonfiction choices, though I do think it’s worth doing – so this year I am! I won’t repeat the intro from last week, but I will re-share the sources, having edited them slightly to show those which included nonfiction … and remind you that I’ve only included the Aussie choices.

Here are the sources I used:

ABC RN Bookshelf (radio broadcaster): Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans and a panel of bookish guests, Jason Steger (arts journalist and former book editor); Jon Page (bookseller); Robert Goodman (reviewer and literary judge specialising in genre fiction): only shared their on air picks, not their extras which became long
Australian Book Review (literary journal): selected across forms by ABR’s reviewers
Australian Financial Review (newspaper, traditional and online): shared “the top picks …to add to your holiday reading pile.” (free briefly, but now paywalled.)
The Conversation (online news source): experts from across the spectrum of The Conversation’s writing so a diverse list
The Guardian (online news source): promotes its list as “Guardian Australia critics and staff pick out the best books of the year”.
Readings (independent bookseller): has its staff “vote” for their favourite books of the year, and then lists the Top Ten in various categories, one of which is adult nonfiction, of which I have included the Australian results.

And here are the books …

Life-writing (Memoir/Autobiography/Biography/Diaries)

Katherine Biber, The last outlaws (Patrick Mullins, ABR; Clare Wright, ABR)
David Brooks, A.D. Hope: A memoir of a literary friendship (Tony Hughes-d-Aeth, ABR)
Geraldine Brooks, Memorial days (Jenny Wiggins, AFR; Susan Wyndham, The Guardian; Readings)
Bob Brown, Defiance (Readings)
Candice Chung, Chinese parents don’t say I love you (Readings)
Robert Dessaix, Chameleon (Tim Byrne, The Guardian) (on my TBR)
Helen Garner, How to end a Story: Collected diaries (Ben Brooker, ABR; Stuart Kells, ABR; Jonathan Ricketson, ABR; Lucy Clark, The Guardian) (see my posts on vol 1 and vol 2 from this collected volume)
Moreno Giovannoni, The immigrants (Joseph Cummins, The Guardian)
Hannah Kent, Always home, always homesick (Kate Evans, ABC)
Josie McSkimming, Gutsy girls (Amanda Lohrey, ABR)
Sonia Orchard, Groomed (Clare Wright, ABR)
Mandy Sayer, No dancing in the lift (Clare Wright, ABR)
Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown, Outrageous fortunes: The adventures of Mary Fortune, crime-writer, and her criminal son George (Stuart Kells, ABR)
Marjorie (Nunga) Williams, Old days (Julie Janson, ABR)

History and other nonfiction

Geoffrey Blainey, The causes of war (rerelease) (Stuart Kells, ABR)
Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson, Conspiracy nation (Joseph Lew, AFR)
Liam Byrne, No power greater: A history of union action in Australia (Marilyn Lake)
Anne-Marie Condé, The Prime Minister’s potato: And other essays (Patrick Mullins, ABR) (on my TBR)
Joel Deane, Catch and kill: The politics of power (rerelease) (Stuart Kells, ABR)
Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein, The Mushroom Tapes (Donna Lu, The Guardian; Readings)
Juno Gemes, Until justice comes (Mark McKenna, ABR)
Alyx Gorman, All women want (Sian Cain, The Guardian)
Luke Kemp, Goliath’s curse: The history and future of societal collapse (Tom Doig, The Conversation; John Long, The Conversation)
Richard King, Brave new wild: Can technology really save the planet? (Carody Culver, ABR; Clinton Fernandes, ABR)
Shino Konishi, Malcolm Allbrook and Tom Griffiths (ed), Reframing Indigenous biography (Kate Fullager, ABR)
Natalie Kyriacou, Nature’s last dance: Tales of wonder in an age of extinction (Euan Ritchie, The Conversation)
Melissa Lucashenko, Not quite white in the head (Glyn Davis, ABR; Michael Williams, ABR; Readings)
Ann McGrath and Jackie Huggins (ed), Deep history: Country and sovereignty (Kate Fullager, ABR)
Tom McIlroy, Blue Poles: Jackson Pollock, Gough Whitlam and the painting that changed a nation (Esther Anatolis, ABR; Alex Now, AFR)
Mark McKenna, Shortest history of Australia (Patrick Mullins, ABR)
Djon Mundine, Windows and mirrors (Victoria Grieves Williams, ABR)
Antonia Pont, A plain life: On thinking, feeling and deciding (Julienne van Loon, The Conversation)
Margot Riley, Pix: The magazine that told Australia’s story (Kevin Foster, ABR)
Sean Scalmer, A fair day’s work: The quest to win back time (Marilyn Lake, ABR)
Emma Shortis, After America: Australia and the new world order (Marilyn Lake, ABR)
Don Watson, The shortest history of the United States of America (Emma Shortis, The Conversation)
Hugh White, Hard new world: Our post-American future (Marilyn Lake, ABR)
Tyson Yunkaporta & Megan Kelleher, Snake talk (Readings)

Cookbooks

Helen Goh, Baking & the meaning of life (Sian Cain, The Guardian)
Rosheen Kaul, Secret sauce (Alyx Gorman, The Guardian)
Thi Le, Viet Kieu: Recipes remembered from Vietnam (Yvonne C Lam, The Guardian)

Finally …

One children’s book, as far as I could tell, was chosen, and I’ve not included it anywhere else so here it is:

Rae White, with Sha’an d’Anthes (illus.), All the colours of the rainbow (Esther Anatolis, ABR)

A few books were named by two people, with two books named by three, Geraldine Brooks’ Memorial days and Melissa Lucashenko’s Not quite white in the head, and one named by four, Helen Garner’s How to end a Story: Collected diaries. Is it a coincidence that these authors have also written fiction? Or that in terms of my reading wishes, they are up there, though several others are in my sights.

Is there any nonfiction in your sights for 2026? After all, Nonfiction November isn’t that far away if this year is any indication!