I write about anxiety, intimacy and absurdity, in both fiction and nonfiction. I have a particular interest in the body, and the ways in which it escapes our control.

My debut novel, The Water Takes, is out in April 2026 with Summit Australia.
My first book, The First Time I Thought I Was Dying, a collection of non-fiction essays about the unruly body in late capitalism, was published by UQP in 2021 and won the Quentin Bryce Award.

My work has appeared in The Monthly, Overland, Meanjin, Island Magazine, Kill Your Darlings, the ABR, the AFR and The Guardian, and has been recognised in awards in Australia and internationally. I’m represented by the excellent Rach Crawford at Wolf Literary.

THE WATER TAKES

Coming April 2026.

An unimaginable apocalypse. A scared young girl. A stubborn old woman. But without each other, neither of them will survive.

Pam is in her mid-seventies, widowed, and hiding from the world behind a caustic sense of humour. Her health is declining, and she’s afraid of dying alone, but her most pressing concern is complaining to the council about her waterlogged garden.

When Pam’s ten-year-old neighbour, Charlotte, is foisted upon her, a tentative friendship begins to unfurl, cracking open Pam’s hard exterior.

But the puddles in the garden become pools, and then sinkholes. Nowhere seems safe. With no help coming, Pam and Charlotte can only shelter in place for so long – eventually, they must attempt to navigate a catastrophically altered world.

The Water Takes is a work of astonishing literary imagination with the urgent page-turning propulsion of a thriller. Full of surprises and revelations and a sense of humanity that is never cliched or sentimental, The Water Takes will make you laugh and cry – and it will stay with you forever.

Pre-order from Summit Australia here.

THE FIRST TIME I THOUGHT I WAS DYING

A collection of essays about bodies and control.

We live in a world that expects us to be constantly in control of ourselves. Our bodies and minds, though, have other ideas.

In this striking debut, artist and writer Sarah Walker wrestles with the awkward spaces where anatomy meets society: body image and Photoshop, phobias and religion, sex scenes and onstage violence, death and grief. Her luminous writing is at once specific and universal as she mines the limits of anxiety, intimacy and control.

Sharp-witted and poignant, this collection of essays explores our unruly bodies and asks how we might learn to embrace our own chaos.

Winner of the 2021 Quentin Bryce Award.

More info and reviews here.