2023 in Australian literature

Events

• July: Publisher Hachette Australia withdraws from publication the book titled Special Operations Group by Christophe Glasl after Victoria Police expressed concerns about the accuracy of the book
• December: Yumna Kassab is announced as inaugural Parramatta Laureate of Literature for 2024

Major publications

Literary fiction

• Hossein Asgari – Only Sound Remains
• Tony Birch – Women & Children
• Katherine Brabon – Body Friend
• Jen Craig – Wall
• Lauren Aimee Curtis – Strangers in the Port
• Trent Dalton – Lola in the Mirror
• André Dao – Anam
• Gregory Day – The Bell of the World
• Ali Cobby Eckermann – She Is the Earth
• Lexi Freiman – The Book of Ayn
• Madeleine Gray – Green Dot
• Kate Grenville – Restless Dolly Maunder
• John Kinsella – Cellnight: A verse novel
• Melissa Lucashenko – Edenglassie
• Kate Morton – Homecoming
• Genevieve Novak – Crushing
• Emily O'Grady – Feast
• Angela O'Keeffe – The Sitter
• Mirandi Riwoe – Sunbirds
• Sanya Rushdi – Hospital
• Kate Scott – Compulsion
• Tracy Sorensen – The Vitals
• Lucy Treloar – Days of Innocence and Wonder
• Christos Tsiolkas – The In-Between
• Pip Williams – The Bookbinder of Jericho
• Charlotte Wood – Stone Yard Devotional
• Alexis Wright – ''Praiseworthy''

Children's and Young Adult fiction

• Melissa Kang & Yumi Stynes – Welcome to Sex, illustrated by Jenny Latham
• Will Kostakis – We Could Be Something
• Alice Pung – Millie Mak the Maker, illustrated by Sher Rill Ng
• Lili Wilkinson – A Hunger of Thorns
• Dianne Wolfer – ''Scout and the Rescue Dogs''

Short story collections

• J. M. Coetzee – The Pole and Other Stories
• Laura Jean McKay – Gunflower
• Graeme Simsion – ''Creative Differences: And Other Stories''

Crime and mystery

• Tim Ayliffe – Killer Traitor Spy
• Ashley Kalagian Blunt – Dark Mode
• Shelley Burr – Ripper
• Candice Fox – Fire With Fire
• Megan Goldin – Dark Corners
• Chris Hammer – The Seven
• Amanda Hampson – The Tea Ladies
• Sally Hepworth – Darling Girls
• Fiona McIntosh – Dead Tide
• Benjamin Stevenson – Everyone on this train is a suspect
• Chris Womersley – ''Ordinary Gods and Monsters''

Science fiction and fantasy

• Greg Egan
• * "Didicosm"
• * Scale
• James Islington – The Will of the Many
• Shelley Parker-Chan – ''He Who Drowned the World''

Poetry

• Stuart Barnes – Like to the Lark
• Dan Hogan – Secret Third Thing
• John Kinsella – Harsh Hakea: Collected Poems Volume Two
• David McCooey – The Book of Falling
• Jennifer Maiden – Golden Bridge: New Poems
• Pi O – The Tour
• Tais Rose Wae – Riverbed Sky Songs
• Grace Yee – ''Chinese Fish''

Non-Fiction

• Katie Ariel – The Swift Dark Tide
• Chanel Contos – Consent Laid Bare
• Robyn Davidson – Unfinished Woman
• Marele Day – Reckless
• Martin Flanagan – The Empty Honour Board
• Clementine Ford – I Don't
• Anna Funder – Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life
• Michael Gawenda – My Life as a Jew
• Stan Grant – The Queen is Dead: The Time has Come for a Reckoning
• Susan Johnson – Aphrodite's Breath
• Christine Kenneally – Ghosts of the Orphanage
• Sarah Krasnostein – On Peter Carey
• David Marr – Killing for Country: A Family Story
• Ross McMullin – Life So Full of Promise
• Alex Miller – A Kind of Confession: The Writer's Private World
• Matt Preston – Big Mouth
• Alecia Simmonds – Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law
• Margaret Simons – Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms
• Christine Wallace – ''Political Lives: Australian Prime Ministers and Their Biographers''

Drama

• Nicholas Brown – Sex Magick
• Joanna Murray-Smith – ''Julia''

Awards and honours

Literary

Fiction

Crime and Mystery

National

Deaths

• 21 January – Gabrielle Williams, author of young adult fiction
• 3 February – Portia Robinson, historian
• 19 April – Lee Harding, novelist
• 21 April – John Tranter, poet, publisher and editor
• 22 April – Barry Humphries, comedian, author, actor and satirist
• 2 May – Gabrielle Carey, novelist
• 22 May – Andrew Burke, poet
• 30 June – Ron Pretty, poet
• 6 August – Elizabeth Webby, scholar of Australian literature
• 18 November – Nan Witcomb, poet and radio broadcaster
• 21 November – Dale Spender, feminist writer
• 10 December – Michael Blakemore, actor, writer and theatre director
• 12 December – Shirley Barber, children's author and illustrator
• 30 December – John Pilger, journalist and filmmaker