Hannah Kent on her latest book, 'Always Home, Always Homeisck'

WORDS Samantha Corry PHOTOGRAPHY Courtesy of Hannah Kent PUBLISHED Mon, 5 May 2025 - 5:15 pm

Hannah Kent is one of Australia’s most revered literary voices, a writer whose work is marked by its emotional depth, historical precision, and deep sense of place. Since the release of her internationally bestselling debut Burial Rites, Kent has been drawn to stories that dwell in the liminal; life and death, belonging and exile, the sacred and the ordinary. Her books, The Good People and Devotion trace forgotten histories with clarity, while her original feature film Run Rabbit Run, starring Sarah Snook is a chilling exploration on motherhood and trauma.

Long before she became known as a novelist, at seventeen years old, Kent stepped off a plane into the middle of an Icelandic winter as an exchange student. At Keflavik Airport, she caught a bus to the town Reykjavik and the day after, spent her first day visiting the National Archives. Years later, it would be in that same building that she’d begin writing Burial Rites an offering to the country that had quietly, irrevocably altered the course of her life.

Her latest book and first non-fiction, Always Home, Always Homesick, is a return to that moment, and to the nation that continues to haunt and inspire her. Part memoir, part cultural study, it charts the two-decade relationship she’s built with Iceland, from the small fishing towns and sagas, to folk legends and literary festivals. It’s a meditation on what it means to write about place, and to belong somewhere that will never quite belong to you.

At home in Australia, Kent reads across fiction, folklore, and history with the same attentiveness she brings to her own storytelling. Her bookshelves, like her work, are filled with voices that blur fact and feeling, that honour the silence between the lines. Whether she’s researching in Reykjavik or writing on Peramangk and Kaurna country, Kent’s literary world remains expansive, intimate, and unafraid of the unknown.

Below, we speak to Hannah Kent on the stories that shaped her path, the books she returns to, and the ones she holds closest.

The last book I read …

I often read several books at the same time. Those most recently finished include This Stays Between Us by Margot McGovern, A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan and Fierceland by Omar Musa. Margot is a dear friend of mine with a passion for horror and young adult fiction, and her latest book is an absolute corker. It scared me witless. Trevelyan’s A Beautiful Family is a wonderfully tense mystery coming in June this year, and Fierceland is Omar Musa’s latest offering of potent, powerful prose set in Australia and Borneo, coming out in September. I recommend them all.

The books currently on my bedside table…

There’s quite a pile: Salvage by Jennifer Mills, Parallel Lines by Edward St Aubyn and Evie Wyld’s The Echoes.

My favourite book of all time…

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robyn Wall Kimmerer, a nonfiction book about the reciprocal relationships between humans, plants and the land. I turn to it when I need to be reminded of the abundance, beauty and grace in the world, and of the interconnectedness that surrounds us. It humbles me.

The literary character I most identify with is…

I don’t think I’ve ever really identified with a literary character. I never go looking for myself in books – I think one of the greatest pleasures of reading is spending time with characters who are vastly different from myself, but who nonetheless may experience the same moments of fear, desire, longing, hope. It’s like that quote by William Nicholson: "We read to know we are not alone."

The book that changed my life is…

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I read it when I was young and had a very strange, almost ecstatic response to her articulation of rich inner lives existing beneath ordinary or trivial outward existence. The way she presents the problem of perception, of knowing others, felt revelatory.

The best book I ever received is…

A first edition of W.H. Auden’s Some Poems, as well as every book my wife has ever given me.

The book I would give as a gift is …

There are a few books that I have to keep on buying because I always end up impulsively giving them to friends. Tiny Beautiful Thing: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed is one that often goes home with people who are at an impasse in their personal lives. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is one I often lend to other writers, but I never get it back again.

Growing up, the best book on my bookshelf was…

Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott. The March sisters felt like my dearest friends.

A writer I admire the most is…

Off the top of my head? Toni Morrison. Sjón. Tara June Winch. Charlotte Wood. Claire Keegan. Ron Rash. Janet Frame. Robbie Arnott. Lauren Groff. Colson Whitehead. Emma Donoghue. Mary Oliver. Gail Jones. Sarah Waters. Max Porter. Halldór Laxness. Per Pettersen. I could go on forever. There are so many.