What’s Happening in 2026?

This year I’ll have two books coming out.

The first is Goodbye, My Love, a novel which will be released by Ultimo Press on the 28th of April. This is the 5th cover that Mika Tabata has created for my books, and I love how Goodbye, My Love and The Lovers go together, that the couple on the front of The Lovers are now facing away from each other.

The second book will be the Parramatta dictionary. The official title will be Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory and it will be the full alphabet, an expansion on the 8 letters that exist in their fragmentary form on the Sydney Review of Books website.

What is the difference between the digital version and the physical book version?

The digital version was released two letters at a time (C&S, T&W, M&N and O&P) starting in October last year. The design of the SRB website gives a fragmentary read and I suspect that the book will be more linear. Also, the digital version has photos while the book version will not. Lastly, the digital version is 8 letters and the printed book will cover A to Z.

The release date is not set yet but the dictionary is expected in the second half of the year. It will be released by Giramondo who also released my debut book, The House of Youssef.

In other news, I will be appearing at the Newcastle Writers Festival. It will be my first festival of the year and I am very excited. My first session will be The Library That Made Me with Gail Jones, Sarah Krasnostein and Corey Tutt. It is to coincide with the anthology with the same title celebrating the State Library of NSW’s 200th anniversary.

Also, the Parramatta Literary Salon at the Arts and Cultural Exchange just hosted its 3rd salon with Sherene Idriss interviewing Randa Abdel-Fattah about her body of work. It was a wide-ranging and thought-provoking conversation, and I really love a conversation where writers are able to talk about more than just their latest book.

The next salon will feature Sheila Ngọc Phạm interviewing Felicity Castagna on Wednesday the 11th of March. As with other events in this salon series, it will be about the Felicity’s body of work and Charnel Rizk will share some of her poems on the night.