2008 in Australian literature

Events

"The Bulletin" magazine publishes its last issue, the first was in 1880

The Australia Council for the Arts announces Christopher Koch and Gerald Murnane as recipients of its 2008 emeritus writers awards

The Australian Federal Government announces funding for a new chair of Australian Literature based at the University of Western Australia

Clunes, Victoria, holds its second Booktown weekend

The first Crime and Justice Festival in held in Melbourne over the weekend of 19–20 July

Australia wins the right to host the 2010 World SF convention in Melbourne

A number of previously unknown Banjo Paterson poems are found in an old cash book dating back to the Boer War

UNESCO names Melbourne as its second City of Literature, after Edinburgh received the first such award in 2004

Caro Llewellyn, a former director of the Sydney Writers' Festival and PEN World Voices Festival in New York, is appointed as director of the new Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas (now called the Wheeler Centre) in Melbourne

Literary fiction

Debra Adelaide – The Household Guide to Dying

Murray Bail – The Pages

Geraldine Brooks – People of the Book

Peter Carey – His Illegal Self

Luke Davies – God of Speed

Robert Drewe – The Rip

Richard Flanagan – Wanting

Helen Garner – The Spare Room

Peter Goldsworthy – Everything I Knew

Kate Grenville – The Lieutenant

Vicki Hastrich – The Great Arch

Wendy James – The Steele Diaries

Susan Johnson – Life in Seven Mistakes

Toni Jordan – Addition

Sofie Laguna – One Foot Wrong

Nam Le – The Boat

Joan London – The Good Parents

Louis Nowra – Ice

Kevin Rabelais – The Landscape of Desire

Claire Thomas – fugitive blue

Steve Toltz – A Fraction of the Whole

Ian Townsend – The Devil's Eye

Christos Tsiolkas – The Slap

Tim Winton – Breath

Arnold Zable – Sea of Many Returns

Children's and Young Adult fiction

Isobelle Carmody – The Stone Key

Kate Constable – Always Mackenzie

Alison Croggon —The Singing

Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury – Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes

Jackie French – A Rose for the Anzac Boys

Mark Greenwood and Frane Lessac – Simpson and His Donkey

Jack Heath – Money Run

Simone Howell – Everything Beautiful

Catherine Jinks – Genius Squad

Maureen McCarthy – Somebody's Crying

Melina Marchetta – Finnikin of the Rock

Sophie Masson – The Case of the Diamond Shadow

Garth Nix – Superior Saturday

Penni Russon – The Indigo Girls

Shaun Tan – Tales from Outer Suburbia

Lili Wilkinson – The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend

Sean Williams – Dust Devils

Crime and Mystery

Peter Corris – Open File

Leah Giarratano – Voodoo Doll

Kerry Greenwood – Murder on a Midsummer Night

Marion Halligan – Murder on the Apricot Coast

Jarad W. Henry – Blood Sunset

Katherine Howell – The Darkest Hour

Barry Maitland – Bright Air

P.D. Martin – Fan Mail

Camilla Nelson – Crooked

Alex Palmer – The Tattooed Man

Bronwyn Parry – As Darkness Falls

Kel Robertson – Smoke and Mirrors

Michael Robotham – Shatter

Romance

Anne Gracie – The Stolen Princess

Stephanie Laurens – The Edge of Desire

Margaret Leigh – The Heart Divided

Estelle Pinney – Burnt Sunshine

Science Fiction and Fantasy

K. A. Bedford – Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait

Honey Brown – Red Queen

Nathan Burrage – Fivefold

Sara Douglass – The Twisted Citadel

Greg Egan – Incandescence

Jennifer Fallon – The Chaos Crystal

Pamela Freeman – Deep Water

Alison Goodman – The Two Pearls of Wisdom

Traci Harding – The Dragon Queens

Simon Haynes – Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch

Margo Lanagan – Tender Morsels

Fiona McIntosh – Rogue Agent

Juliet Marillier – Heir to Sevenwaters

K.E. Mills – The Accidental Sorcerer

Sean Williams – Earth Ascendent

Drama

John Doyle – The Pig Iron People

Joanna Murray-Smith – Ninety

Poetry

See also 2008 in poetry

Robert Adamson – The Golden Bird: New and Selected Poems, winner of the C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry in the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, shortlisted for the 2009 Age Book of the Year Awards

Michael Brennan – Unanimous Night

David Brooks – The Balcony, finalist for the 2008 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry; University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3669-3

Elizabeth Hodgson – Skin Painting, winner of the 2007 David Unaipon Award; University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3677-8

Sarah Holland-Batt – Aria

Clive James – Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958-2008

John Kinsella – Divine Comedy, University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3666-2

Anthony Lawrence – Bark, University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3664-8

David Malouf – Revolving Days, University of Queensland Press, ISBN 978-0-7022-3635-8

Peter Rose editor – The Best Australian Poems 2008 Black Inc., ISBN 978-1-86395-303-0

Non-fiction

Germaine Greer – On Rage

Chloe Hooper – The Tall Man

Biographies

Peter Costello – The Costello Memoirs

Andrew Riemer – A Family History of Smoking

Deaths

11 January – Nancy Phelan, author (born 1913)

27 March – Alan Collins, short story writer (born 1928)

8 April – John Button, politician and author (born 1933)

26 April – Pamela Bone, journalist and author (born 1940)

29 April – John Hooker, author (born 1932)

21 June – Justina Williams, poet (born 1916)

24 August – Patricia Rolfe, short story writer and critic (born 1920)

30 September – Eleanor Spence, writer for children (born 1928)

30 October – Jacob G. Rosenberg, poet and memoirist (born 1922)

15 November – Ivan Southall, writer for children (born 1921)

10 December – Dorothy Porter, poet (born 1954)