2008 in Australian literature

This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2008.

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
 * The Indie Book Awards are presented for the first time

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
 * "Crystal Nights"
 * Dark Integers and Other Stories
 * 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
 * Juliet Marillier – Heir to Sevenwaters
 * K.E. Mills – The Accidental Sorcerer
 * Sean Williams – Earth Ascendant

Drama

 * John Doyle – The Pig Iron People
 * Alexandra Edmondson – Cruising
 * 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
 * Jacqueline Kent – An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin
 * 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)