Everything is Water front cover

Everything is Water

Released June 2024

Everything is Water considers our complex relationship with nature through flood, drought, time and place. It is an inspiring pilgrimage that invites us to connect with nature and also to navigate our own path.

When novelist and experienced hiker Simon Cleary sets off to follow the course of the river that has so influenced his life, he hopes that by walking its banks – from its source to where it empties into the bay – he will better understand the power and impact of this immense waterway on the environment and communities who rely on it.

Cleary’s ambitious journey, alone and with companions, explores the ways rivers connect landscapes, ecologies, histories, communities and myth. But his journey along the unpredictable and magnificent Brisbane River threatens to be cut short by one of the wettest autumn months on record. Over four eventful weeks and 344 kilometres we are witness to the river in all its beauty and fury.

Simon Cleary

Simon Cleary is the author of three novels, including The Comfort of Figs (2008), which was published after the manuscript was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. His second novel, Closer to Stone (2012), was inspired by his experiences in North Africa at the commencement of the Algerian civil war in the 1990s. It went on to win the Queensland Literary Awards People’s Choice Award in 2012. Simon’s third novel, The War Artist, was published in 2019. He lives in Brisbane.
Simon Cleary, Author

Photo: Patrick Hamilton

Books

The War Artist Front Cover

The War Artist

2019

Cover of Closer to Stone

Closer to Stone

2012

Comfort of Figs

The Comfort of Figs

2008