Trent Dalton - All Our Shimmering Skies

Trent Dalton, bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, returns with the most anticipated novel of 2020. All Our Shimmering Skies is an epic odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and blue skies. It is a love letter to Australia and an ode to the art of looking up. 

A story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves, All Our Shimmering Skies is a buoyant, beautiful and magical novel, abrim with warmth, wit and wonder.

Trent appears in-conversation with Michaela Kalowski. 

Event tickets are $7. Or you can select an Event+Book combo ticket for $34.99 - a saving of $5. You can also opt to have your copies shipped to you anywhere in Australia for free! 

This event will take place on Zoom. The Zoom meeting details form part of your ticket, emailed to you after registration. 

About the Book

Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, is looking to the skies and running for her life. Inside a duffel bag, she carries a stone heart, alongside a map to lead her to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who she believes put a curse on her family. 

By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress, and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot. The treasure lies before them, but close behind them trails the dark. And above them, always, are the shimmering skies.

A story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves, All Our Shimmering Skies is a buoyant, beautiful and magical novel, abrim with warmth, wit and wonder.

About the Author

Trent Dalton is a staff writer for the Weekend Australian Magazine and a former assistant editor of The Courier Mail. He’s a two-time winner of a Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism, a four-time winner of a Kennedy Award for Excellence in NSW Journalism and a four-time winner of the national News Awards Features Journalist of the Year. 

Since its publication in June 2018, Trent’s critically acclaimed debut novel Boy Swallows Universe has become one of the most loved Australian novels of all time, breaking Nielsen Bookscan records to become Australia’s fastest selling debut novel ever. Dalton’s uniquely Australian voice has also been embraced by readers overseas, with rights sold to 34 English language and translation territories. 

It has won many major Australian literary prizes including the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the 2019 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the 2019 Indie Book of the Year, NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writer and People’s Choice, the Indie Book of the Year and a record-breaking four Australian Book Industry Awards. Boy Swallows Universe is currently being adapted for the stage by Queensland Theatre Company and for the screen, with Joel Edgerton attached.

About the Moderator

Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, facilitator and presenter. She is a regular interviewer/facilitator at Sydney Writers’ Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Jewish Writers Festival, Rose Scott Women Writers’ Festival, UNSW, for local libraries and community organisations. She's also presented programs and conducted interviews for ABC Radio National, Local Radio and Classic FM. Her recent interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Trent Dalton, Julia Baird, Michael Connelly and Tim Flannery. In June 2020 she curated ABC Radio National’s first ever on-air writers’ festival, The Big Weekend of Books.