Always Will Be

Shortlisted, 2025 NSW Literary Awards - Indigenous Writers' Prize

Longlisted, 2025 Stella Prize Highly Commended, 2025 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - Indigenous Writing 'Vivid and inventive fiction, full of thought-provoking contests of ideas and values, that expands possibilities for First Nations literature.' The Age 'The stories in Always Will Be were crafted with care, respect and humour. They are in equal measures enlightening and entertaining. This collection is a must-read in 2024.' The Conversation

In this stunningly inventive and thought-provoking collection, Mykaela Saunders poses the question: what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?

Each of the stories in Always Will Be is set in its own future version of the Tweed. In one, a group of girls plot their escape from a home they have no memory of entering. In another, two men make a final visit to the country they love as they contemplate a new life in a faraway place. Saunders imagines different scenarios for how the local Goori community might reassert sovereignty - reclaiming country, exerting full self-determination, or incorporating non-Indigenous people into the social fabric - while practising creative, ancestrally approved ways of living with changing climates.

Epic in scope, and with a diverse cast of characters, Always Will Be is the ground-breaking winner of the 2022 David Unaipon Award. This is a forward-thinking collection that refuses cynicism and despair, and instead offers entertaining stories that celebrate Goori ways of being, knowing, doing - and becoming.