Jane Rawson’s new novel, A History of Dreams, is out now with Brio Books.

Jane is the author of novels From the Wreck and A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, a novella, Formaldehyde, and the non-fiction book The Handbook: surviving & living with climate change.

You can read her essays in Living with the Anthropocene; Fire, Flood, Plague; and Reading like an Australian Writer, or subscribe to her newsletter, earth’s ends.

She is the Managing Editor at Island magazine and co-edited Breathing space, a collection of reflections and projections on nature in Tasmania.

Represented by Jane Novak Literary Agency.

Photo of Jane is by Eddie Safarik

Jane grew up in Canberra and now lives in Tasmania’s Huon Valley; she got there via Melbourne and San Francisco. She works as a communications coordinator for a Tasmanian conservation organisation and likes cats, quiet, minimal capitalisation, and finding out that everything is going to be OK.

Short stories
Story

Moss

Published in Island Magazine

Looking out the kitchen window at a garden gone dry Even the fallen camellia petals, the brown slime of them piled beneath the hedge, have crisped and turned to dust. She boils the jug but can’t face the tea Runs, instead, the tap in the bathroom until the water pours cold Soaks a face cloth […]

She couldn’t say how long she’d been up there before David’s arrival. Time was measured differently those days, if it was measured at all. But it had been thirty years since he’d brought her down here and every summer hotter than the last.

Climate change
Essay

Things fall apart

Published in Meanjin

At first it was catching COVID that scared me. But now, it’s how quickly everything has collapsed. Apparently, some part of me still believed that here in Australia, when it came down to it, governments would step in and protect us. All the evidence is against this belief, of course, but sometimes we hang on […]

Apparently, some part of me still believed that here in Australia, when it came down to it, governments would step in and protect us. All the evidence is against this belief, of course, but sometimes we hang on to irrational ideas just so we can get on with our day.

Right now, I’m letting go of that belief. Because today we’re faced with a situation where an already existing, cheap-to-produce, simple-to-distribute technology that we need to keep us safe and which it was easy to predict we’d need, just isn’t available. Those without money can’t get it at all. Even those with money are spending half their lives checking websites, going door-to-door, hoping to get their hands on one that they know will be hideously marked up, because the market charges what the market will bear.

Essay

Nothing more to say

Published in Griffith Review

Why would you write about this terrible mess?

Is it pointless to write once more that things are a terrible mess? It would be good if we could write instead, or as well: here is the path to fix it. To write, yes, our house is on fire but also, here is the fire exit or – even better! And if only! – here comes the fire brigade. But what do we write in the section marked ‘how to fix climate change’ when our options are necessarily limited by the sheer bloody-minded inertia of government? 

Essay

Who belongs here?

Published in Meanjin

Nature in Australia is a mess. There’s no need to go into details. You’ve seen it: the thousands of dead fish in drying rivers, three billion animals killed or displaced by bushfire, environmental legislation that privileges developers over endangered species. Up against all this are conservationists—scientists and activists slogging away in a losing battle to explain the size of the problem, to get laws changed, to stop a tree being felled or a mine being opened, to pluck species from the brink of destruction with monitoring and intervention.

Humans adapt to shifting baselines; it’s given us the ability to cope with all kinds of things. We take the world as we find it and try to make the most of things as they are. For many of us, our baseline is a landscape depleted of locally indigenous species, homogenised. The species we know about are the iconic ones—kookaburras, koalas and, perhaps, horses. They’re the ones that feel to us as if they belong, even if once they didn’t. Or, as one Tasmanian said to me about a bird that was introduced to the state in the early twentieth century, ‘Kookaburras have always been here, haven’t they?’

Some random videos

Me and Ben Walter talking about why anyone would bother writing books when the world is ending, at Wild Island in Hobart, Tasmania

Probably the most-fun panel moderation I’ve ever done – pandemic-era online chat with Laura Jean McKay, James Bradley and Chris Flynn about writing about animals, for Write Around the Murray

Deep in the time of lockdown, a way-too-revealing discussion with Belinda Castles at Sydney Uni about Writers at Work

On the radio

  • ABC Radio with Myf Warhurst – 5 November 2018 – There’s nothing better than having a story read to you aloud – but the fun shouldn’t have to end once we’ve grown up. Story Time for Adults is a short story reading club for older readers. Authors Jane Rawson, Rose Mulready and Patrick Allington are all huge fans of the short story.
  • ABC Radio National ‘The Bookshelf’ – 2 November 2018 – Realist novels, fantastical and historical – the bookshelf is split on this week’s show, although tentacles of ideas reach out and touch each book and reader. Novelist Jane Rawson (From the Wreck) loves her reading to be surprising and genre bending, and ideally to include an octopus, while writer John Tesarch (Dinner with the Dissidents) prefers realism. Literary academic and Victorianist David Ellison looks for clever, complex immersion.
  • Radio Adelaide – 10 August 2018 – Jane Rawson has once again pushed the boundaries of speculative fiction. Her new novel From The Wreck is a masterful blend of historical fiction and extra-terrestrial dispossession, and is the first book to win the Aurealis Award for Science Fiction and also be listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
  • ABC Radio National ‘The Hub on Books’ – 17 July 2018 – A group of friends who believe the Australian short story is undervalued gather a few times a year and read aloud their favourite short stories. It’s a short story club called Story Time for Adults. It’s held at writer, Jane Rawson’s, house in Melbourne’s west, and yes, tea, cheese and wine are consumed. Producer, Barbara Heggen went along to one of their gatherings.
  • ABC Radio National ‘Book Hub’ – 5 June 2018 – The Great Debate: Write What You Know – Arguing on the affirmative team: Mark BrandiClaire Coleman and Bram Presser. And on the negative team: Jane RawsonGraeme Simsion and Michelle Aung Thin.
  • ABC Canberra – 24 May 2018 – Canberra-born and raised author Jane Rawson’s latest science fiction novel, From The Wreck is on the long list for the Miles Franklin and has already won the Aurealis Award for best science fiction novel.
  • ABC Radio National ‘Books & Arts’ – 29 March 2017 – Weird fiction sits on the outer reaches of the speculative fiction genre but it’s not as well known a term in Australia. Michael Cathcart speaks to three Australian writers who embrace this moniker.
  • 3CR ‘Published or Not’ – 9 March 2017 – Jane Rawson takes us on a psychological and metaphysical journey in ‘From the Wreck’.

Podcasts

  • Catastropod – January 2019 – In this episode of Catastropod, Marlee Jane Ward and I chat about my non-fiction work ‘The Handbook of Surviving and Living With Climate Change’. Is climate change apocalyptic?
  • Meanjin– November 2018 – In the November episode of the Meanjin podcast, Jonathan Green hosts Miles Franklin–longlisted author Jane Rawson and naturalist Harry Saddler in a discussion about the dark reality of climate change for animals.
  • The First Time – October 2018 – Annabel and Jane collaborate on the fabulous blog series What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Book. We begin our conversation talking about Annabel and Jane’s first publication experiences. Annabel’s ran kind of like a dream and Jane’s first published book was not the first she wrote (a phenomenon that might be familiar to many of our listeners!).

Adelaide Writers Week 2018 – audio

  • Seeking Refuge – In Claire G Coleman’s novel Terra Nullius, she creates a world where the Settlers are eager to settle the savages. In Jane Rawson’s From the Wreck a mysterious creature survives the 1859 sinking of the Admella and attaches herself to a young boy. Join them for a conversation about how the fantastical helps make sense of Australia’s colonial past.
  • Invented Histories – This session brings together two writers who have taken moments in Australian history and imagined them into stories of blood, bonds and memory. In Storyland Catherine McKinnon connects Flinders’ voyage to Illawarra to a 19th century farm and then well into the future. In From the Wreck, Jane Rawson connects the sinking of the steamship Admella with a creature seeking refuge on earth.
  • On Bees & Birds (chair) – One time metaphor for sex, the birds and bees are increasingly a harbinger of doom. In Harriet McKnight’s novel Rain Birds, two women in a remote community find themselves at odds over a flock of cockatoos. In Maja Lunde’s novel The History of Bees, a century of beekeepers is lost to the future. For both writers nature is a place to consider our future.

At the Wheeler Centre – video

  • Science Fiction Addiction – 27 Oct 2014 – Is there such a thing as Australian science fiction – when you’re dealing with other worlds, does the nationality of the writer (and the setting) matter? Are there any questions or issues that Australian science fiction is uniquely positioned to address? And what’s so good about science fiction, anyway? Doug Hendrie talked to Jane Rawson, Lucy Sussex, Andrew Macrae and Max Barry about why they read and write in the genre, and what it means to be an Australian sci-fi writer.
  • The City of the Future – 13 Feb 2013 – In 30 years, Melbourne’s CBD will have another 220,000 new residents. A ‘second CBD’ has been proposed for Melbourne’s west, along with a third runway for Tullamarine airport – and more green wedge land for housing. Can a big Melbourne remain beautiful – let alone liveable or sustainable? Can we have it all, or do tough choices lie ahead? Part of our second Ideas for Melbourne series, Jane Rawson led a panel comprising Alan Davies, David Nichols and Roz Hansen.
  • On Politics and Conservation – 12 Nov 2012 – interviewing Tim Flannery about his Quarterly Essay.