Vote for Where the Birds Call Her Name in Dymocks Top 101

Can you help me?

Voting is open for the 2026 Dymocks Top 101 and if you enjoyed Where the Birds Call Her Name, I’d love you forever if you gave her a vote!

You will go in the draw to win one of five $101 Dymocks gift cards, and you can vote for nine other fav books too!

The link is below, and a little hint: type my name into the search bar to easily find my books, and perhaps you’d even like to give The Secrets of the Huon Wren a vote too!

Thank you in advance!

This kind of listing makes a BIG difference to us authors, extending the shelf life of our books in a market that’s rather saturated, with new books being released daily.

Vote Now

Exciting 2-Book Deal with Penguin Random House

I am so very thrilled to be able to share that I have just signed a 2-book deal with Penguin Random House for my third and fourth books, releasing in 2027 and 2029.

If you follow me on Facebook and Instagram, you will know this already… as well as the title of my 2027 novel:

All Our Wild Beginnings

(Here is a very small teaser…)

A bush perfumer.
A helicopter crash in the Tasmanian wilderness.
A secret that will shatter a young woman’s world.

Follow Ember as she traces the scent of truth to reveal mysteries past and present.

Coming in 2027 (and I’ll be sharing much, much more in the lead-up to publication day of course!).

It’s a great delight to be continuing this relationship with the Penguin Random House family, including my wonderful publisher Ali Watts. My gratitude to my agent Benython Oldfield at Zeitgeist Agency for brokering the deal, and to you, my readers, for driving continued interest in my writing. Thank you!

Celebrating My Indie Book Awards Longlist Nomination

Yesterday, the 2026 Indie Book Awards longlist was announced, and I am still floating on a cloud of wonderment as I share with you that my second novel Where The Birds Call Her Name was named in the fiction category!

How does this work and what does it mean, you ask?

Australian independent booksellers nominate their favourite Australian books published in the past year. I know quite a few booksellers (believe it or not!) and, without exception, they are astute, discerning and voracious readers. I mean, booksellers are met with thousands of new titles every year, which is what makes this accolade so meaningful. Honestly, I feel like I’ve already won, even if Where the Birds Call Her Name doesn’t make it to the shortlist!

This, from the 2026 Indie Book Awards longlist announcement, articulates it perfectly:

Since 2008, the Indie Book Awards have recognised the finest Australian writing and who better to nominate and judge theses standout titles than indie booksellers? Passionate and knowledgeable, these booksellers champion Australian literature well beyond the big names, enriching the diversity of Australia’s reading culture. These awards honour their essential role in supporting Australian storytellers.

My novel is one of ten books longlisted in the fiction category… and here they are:

FICTION LONGLIST

Lyrebird by Jane Caro (Allen & Unwin)

Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton (Fourth Estate Australia)

Arborescence by Rhett Davis (Hachette Australia)

Legacy by Chris Hammer (Allen & Unwin)

Tenderfoot by Toni Jordan (Hachette Australia)

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Penguin Australia)

One Hundred Years of Betty by Debra Oswald (Allen & Unwin)

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth (Macmillan Australia)

Where the Birds Call Her Name by Claire van Ryn (Penguin Australia)

I Am Nannertgarrook by Tasma Walton (Bundyi, Simon & Schuster Australia)

Sitting alongside so many talented and established authors is a DREAM and an affirmation of much hard work. But I need to also acknowledge that I could never have done this alone. Big thanks to my wonderful publisher Alli Watts, my editor Shané Oosthuizen, my agent Benython Oldfield and the Penguin Random House team. Also, of course, to my family and my Lord and Heavenly Father.

The Shortlist will be announced on 14 January 2026, with the Category Winners and the Overall Book of the Year Winner to be revealed at a virtual ceremony on Monday 23 March 2026. 

Here are the other category longlists – a big congratulations to all the authors named. And a special mention to my dear friend Stef Koens whose novel Daughters of Batavia was named in the Debut Fiction Longlist! Woot!

DEBUT FICTION LONGLIST

The Butterfly Women by Madeleine Cleary (Affirm Press)

Pissants by Brandon Jack (Summit Books, Simon & Schuster Australia)

The Grapevine by Kate Kemp (Hachette Australia)

Very Impressive For Your Age by Eleanor Kirk (Allen & Unwin)

Daughters of Batavia by Stefanie Koens (HarperCollins Australia)

Melaleuca by Angie Faye Martin (HQ Fiction)

The Wolf Tree by Laura McCluskey (HarperCollins Australia)

Stillwater by Tanya Scott (Allen & Unwin)

Eros: Myths for Lovers by Zoe Terakes (Hachette Australia)

When Sleeping Women Wake by Emma Pei Yin (Hachette Australia)

 

ILLUSTRATED NON FICTION LONGLIST

The ADHD Brain Buddy by Matilda Boseley (Penguin Australia)

Planting for Native Birds, Bees and Butterflies by Jaclyn Crupi (Murdoch Books)

Bush Modern by Jessica Lillico & Sean Fennessy (Thames & Hudson Australia)

Handfuls of Sunshine by Tilly Pamment (Murdoch Books)

Wild by Design by Tim Pilgrim (Murdoch Books)

Funga Obscura: Photo journeys among fungi by Alison Pouliot (NewSouth Publishing)

She Shapes History by Sita Sargeant (Hardie Grant Explore)

W*nkernomics by James Schloeffel & Charles Firth (Hardie Grant Books)

Muster Dogs: The Next Generation by Melissa Spencer, Monica O’Brien & Brianna Peacock (ABC Books, HarperCollins Australia)

THAI by Nat Thaipun (Hardie Grant Books)

 

CHILDREN’S LONGLIST

If We Were Dogs by Sophie Blackall (Lothian Children’s Books)

Dropbear by Philip Bunting (Walker Books Australia)

There’s a Prawn in Parliament House: The Kids’ Guide to Australia’s Amazing Democracy by Annabel Crabb, illustrated by First Dog on the Moon (Allen & Unwin Children’s)

Dear Broccoli by Jo Dabrowski, illustrated by Cate James (Affirm Press Kids)

Ninja Girl by Anh Do, illustrated by James Hart (Scholastic Press)

Harry and Gran Bake a Cake by Fiona McIntosh, illustrated by Sara Acton (Puffin)

Runt and the Diabolical Dognapping by Craig Silvey, illustrated by Sara Acton (Allen & Unwin Children’s)

Once I was a Giant by Zeno Sworder (Thames & Hudson Australia)

Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend (Lothian Children’s Books)

Ningaloo by Tim Winton, illustrated by Cindy Lane (Fremantle Press)

 

YOUING ADULT LONGLIST

Catch by Sarah Brill (Allen & Unwin Children’s)

Cruel is the Light by Sophie Clark (Penguin Australia)

The Foal in the Wire by Robbie Coburn (Lothian Children’s Books)

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire by Amy Doak (Penguin Australia)

This Season’s Draft by Jason Gent (Allen & Unwin Children’s)

Drift by Pip Harry (Lothian Children’s Books)

Darkest Night, Brightest Star by Barry Jonsberg (Allen & Unwin Children’s)

Wandering Wild by Lynette Noni (Penguin Australia)

Sonny & Tess by Nova Weetman (University of Queensland Press)

Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson (Allen & Unwin Children’s)

 NON FICTION LONGLIST

Australia: A History by Tony Abbott (HarperCollins Australia)

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks (Hachette Australia)

Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders by Bob Brown (Black Inc)

The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper & Sarah Krasnostein (Text Publishing)

The Mushroom Murders by Greg Haddrick (Allen & Unwin)

Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent (Picador Australia)

Nature’s Last Dance by Natalie Kyriacou (Affirm Press)

A Bunker in Kyiv by John Lyons (ABC Books, HarperCollins Australia)

Destination Moon by Kate Reid (Simon & Schuster Australia)

Borneo: The Last Campaign by Michael Veitch (Hachette Australia)

Place Writing Workshop

Would you like to have a go at writing place? Would you like to learn how to write about place in a way that elevates the experience of it for your reader? Would you like to know my own approach to writing place?

If you answered Yes to any of the above, my upcoming Tas Writers workshop could be just the thing. Scroll down for more information about what the workshop includes, otherwise, here’s the skinny:

Saturday, September 13
10am – 1pm
Launceston Library
Cost: $90 / Taswriters members $80 / Taswriters student members $45

Book Now

Take Me Away: Place Writing that Zings

We’ve all heard it said of certain fiction that ‘the landscape was like another character’.

How does a writer create this sense of depth and complexity when it comes to place-telling?

In this practical workshop, we will explore ways to write about landscapes, suburbia, homes and buildings that invite the reader to step into place, like that wardrobe door into Narnia. We will consider how, as with an artist painting a landscape, the careful and strategic layering of the medium creates a unique rendering of time and place. Texture, composition, style, themes, scale, context, depth, tones, light and shade are some of the elements we will play with.

This workshop will include plenty of opportunity to begin or continue to develop a piece of writing about a significant place. There will be a mix of readings, exercises and discussion, as well as peer feedback. If time and weather permits, we will also venture outdoors for an immersive writing exercise.

Vote to Win 100 Books

I’m not a fan of these kinds of asks… but because of how important it is, I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway!

If you’ve read Where the Birds Call Her Name and enjoyed it – I’d be so grateful if you voted for her in the Better Reading Top 100. It’s quick and easy AND you can also win 100 books!

That wasn’t a typo – seven lucky winners will receive the top 100 books as voted by readers for 2025. You’ll be set for gift-giving, holiday reads, Christmas…

This kind of listing is MASSIVE for an author’s reach in a market that’s increasingly hard to crack. If Where the Birds Call Her Name makes the list, it means that Big W will keep it in stock for a whole year (instead of a small window around publication).

Last year you helped The Secrets of the Huon Wren to make the list… imagine if Birds made it too!

Vote for Where the Birds Call Her Name

Thank you so much for your support!

The tour continues…

While the majority of my Book Launch events for Where the Birds Call Her Name are done and dusted, I have a smattering of events coming up in May if you missed out. An author talk in St Helens, a brunch in conjunction with Devonport Church of Christ and an event in the very place where the novel is set… Stanley! It’s a thrill to be asked to speak at all of these places and I invite you to come along, especially if they are in your locality. Click the button below for dates and more information.

Events

The Birds & I Are On Tour!

It’s two weeks today until Where the Birds Call Her Name will be sitting pretty in bookshops around Australia, ready for you to grab your very own copy. I can’t possibly explain to you just how exciting that is for me! I’m in dreamland!

But just as exciting is the fact that this time ’round, I’m going to be doing a smattering of author events in Tassie (of course), but also in VIC, NSW and QLD! It would give me so much joy to be able to speak to you in person if you can make it to any of these book launch events where I will be sharing about the inspiration, heart and story of my second novel.

Firstly though, I want to speak to my home-towners! Launceston folks, the launch event here will GO OFF! Here are the details:

Where the Birds Call Her Name book launch
Hosted by Petrarch’s Bookshop and the Tamar Valley Writers Festival
Tuesday March 25, 6-7:30pm
Tramsheds Function Centre, Inveresk
Tickets $10 each, including a drink on arrival

Book tickets here

Elsewhere, I’m going to be joining some incredible people in conversation. For example…

  • I’m joining Gina Chick (Alone Australia winner) chatting about our books, birds, grief and all kinds of wondrous life experiences, at Gleebooks in Sydney.
  • I’m joining my gorgeous Penguin Random House publisher Ali Watts in conversation at Mornington Library – a chat that promises some unique insights into the publishing process and the author-publisher relationship.
  • Just confirmed today this one: the wonderful Sandie Docker will join me in conversation at Chatswood Library. She was such a generous supporter of my first novel, so I’m really looking forward to catching up with her.
  • I’ll be talking to one of Australia’s best known and favourite columnists, Frances Whiting, at the Brisbane Square Library.
  • The ever-delightful Danielle Wood (aka Minnie Darke) will join me in conversation at Fullers Bookshop in Hobart.

There’s still some fine-tuning, and the Mornington event link is still incoming, but the booking details for Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Devonport, Launceston, Hobart and George Town events are live.

Attend an event near you

And if you can’t attend an event, perhaps you’d like to suggest it for your bookclub and have your own chat? You could even invite me along (location permitting) or we could do a zoom! And Where the Birds Call Her Name is the April bookclub pick with Rachel Johns’ Book Club with Anthea Hodgson – great convos over on this popular Facebook group.

Thank you for your enduring support and encouragement!

Shalom,
Claire
x

Cover Reveal: Where the Birds Call Her Name

I am so utterly thrilled to share with you the cover of my next book Where the Birds Call Her Name.

Isn’t she beautiful? I’m in love with the native flora, the colour palette and, of course, that gorgeous white-faced heron which is a key bird in the novel’s plot and themes.

This wonderful cover could not have been achieved without the Penguin Random House team, with an extra special mention to designer Nikki Townsend and publisher Ali Watts who have worked tirelessly to ensure it came together just perfectly.

This, my second novel, will be available from March 4, 2025, at your favourite bookshop, online bookstores and as ebook and audiobook.

I’m also excited to share the blurb…

Where the Birds Call Her Name

Broome 2023: When Saskia’s free-spirited mother leaves her a caravan in her will, it doesn’t make sense. Saskia is a schoolteacher, tied to plans and schedules, even if they are beginning to feel restrictive. Then she finds clues in the van about her mother’s mysterious past, setting her on a journey to Tasmania with her young daughter Anouk, who shares her late grandmother’s fascination with birds.

In 1968, teenager Greta De Winter seeks solace in the Stanley wetlands, a swamp that attracts all manner of wildlife. Her father is the local councillor and her mother a taxidermist, working to create bird dioramas for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. But while the De Winter household seems harmless from the outside, a dark secret hides within.

When Saskia and Anouk arrive in Stanley, they search for the missing pieces to the puzzle of Greta’s tragic childhood. In the process of uncovering her family history, Saskia realises that her mother’s final act might also enable her to rediscover who she really is, and what she is truly capable of.

Set in the breathtaking landscape of Tasmania’s majestic north-west, this is a moving and highly evocative novel of family bonds and betrayals, by the bestselling author of The Secrets of the Huon Wren.

I hope that gives enough of a teaser to make you want to run down to your local bookshop and purchase it as soon as it hits the shelves! In the meantime, I’ve just sent the final draft away for typesetting (that’s where the text is put on the page and all the fonts and formatting is applied), and I have another very exciting element to this book coming together in the background. You’re going to LOVE it… but I can’t reveal anything just yet. Don’t you hate it when people do that?

Thank you for your love and support of my writing journey.

I’ll finish with some photos from the recent Tamar Valley Writers Festival event with the lovely Annette Higgs (On a Bright Hillside in Paradise, Penguin Random House, 2023). We had our Writing Family, History and the Tasmanian Landscape talk on Thursday at Peppers Silo Hotel in Launceston. Then, the next day, we walked Higgs Track to Lady Lake Hut, mainly because Annette’s ancestors are responsible for cutting the track back in the day, and she’d not yet walked it herself. We rectified that! But wow, it’s a steep walk… I was still feeling it in my calves days later.

Happy reading, writing and adventuring, friends!

Claire
x

Writing Family, History & Tasmania

On September 12 at Peppers Silo Hotel in Launceston, I will be joining Penguin Prize-winning author Annette Higgs for a conversation titled: Writing Family, History and the Tasmanian Landscape. Hosted by the Tamar Valley Writers Festival, this is a warm-up event to the flagship weekend in October.

Annette’s novel On a Bright Hillside in Paradise is set in Tasmania and is inspired by extensive family research and the history of the Paradise area – particularly, the arrival of Christian Brethren evangelists.

And my novel, The Secrets of the Huon Wren is also set in Tasmania, inspired by more recent family observations as well as 1950s research of the Caveside area, a stone’s throw from the setting of Annette’s novel.

It follows that we’re both pretty chuffed to be able to come together and chew over the finer details of pulling a work of fiction together using truths from history, family and a very similar Tasmanian landscape for texture, authenticity and meaning.

I’d love for you to join us!

The details:
Thursday, September 12
6:30-8:30pm
Peppers Silo Hotel, Launceston
Ticket price includes a drink on arrival

Book Your Tickets HERE

Bring your book club, your family history research group, your historical society, your friend who needs encouragement to get going with writing that novel! And bring your questions too – there will be ample opportunity to voice them.

Petrarch’s Bookshop will be attending if you don’t yet have either of these titles.

Feel free to share this graphic/social media tile with your networks:

Meet me in Avalon, NSW

I’ll be joining a star-studded lineup at the Northern Beaches Readers Festival on September 27-29, and oh how I’d love to meet you! These events are such a joy to connect with readers – and the organisers of the NBRF know it, and have positioned readers front and centre, in the festival’s name and in its focus. Because readers complete the circle of bringing a book to life!

I’m participating in two events:

PAST LIVES & PRESENT CHALLENGES

I will join authors Julie Bennett and Sandie Docker in a panel discussion (facilitated by author Kaneana May) about long-buried secrets, their impact on the present and how they make for powerful storytelling.

Get tickets
WRITING WOMEN BACK INTO HISTORY

I will facilitate this session between authors Tea Cooper, Julie Janson and Alli Parker about their novels and how their female characters offer a different perspective on historical events.

Get tickets

EXCITED? Yes yes yes!

This is going to be an absolutely BRILLIANT festival. There are some massive names in the mix (additional to those I’ve already named!), including Michael Robotham, Candice Fox, Joanna Nell, Amanda Hampson, JP Pomare, Shankari Chandran… and many more! Check out the full program HERE.

If there’s the smallest chance you can come along, even just for a session or two, do yourself a favour and at least check out the full lineup. It’s impressive. And you can also meet me! That’s got to count for something!!

It’s festival season in Claireland, because the NBRF isn’t my only gig on the horizon. I’ll also be joining the lineup at the Tamar Valley Writers Festival here in my beautiful home city, Launceston. Stay tuned for more about that!

I hope winter is treating you kindly. Vicious frosty mornings, and blue-sky, sunny days here in Tas. The magnolia is starting to bloom, doggo spends most of the day lounging on the deck, and I’m entering a busy season of work having picked up some hours at my kids’ school. I’m looking forward to mixing with humans in my day-to-day. A writer’s life can be rather solitary!

Sending smiles from my desk,
Claire
xxx