Heather Rose is the award winning Australian author of nine novels and a celebrated memoir.

Books

One of Australia’s most diverse writers of literature ...

White Heart – 2025 edition

'A haunting blend of spirituality, landscape and grief' - The Sunday Times

The River Wife – 2025 edition

'Passionate and tantalising, elegiac and profound.' Canberra Times

Cover Art the Butterfly Man Heather Rose

The Butterfly Man – 2025 edition

The Butterfly Man - the award winning novel is now published in this new series by Allen & Unwin April 2025.

Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here

'Funny, devastating, miraculous and delightful. This is an extraordinary life story, extraordinarily told.' Bri Lee

Bruny

How far would your government go?

The Museum of Modern Love

It is 2010. Arky Levin is a film composer in New York separated from his wife who has asked him to keep one devastating promise.

Finding Serendipity

What you would have seen is this: a girl and a dog disappearing, as if a door had opened and then closed in the vast darkness of the night sky.

A Week Without Tuesday

Vivienne Small lived in a tree house. It was quite new, her previous one having been destroyed by pirates, as some of you may remember.

Blueberry Pancakes Forever

Outside was a woman wearing a huge coat that might have been made of the fur from a grizzly bear. ‘Tuesday?’ asked the woman in a gravelly voice. ‘I’m Colette Baden-Baden. Is your mother home?

Her writing has a vibrant energy, which intensifies and then calms like the widening flow of a river.”

Sydney Morning Herald

This award-winning writer’s eclectic memoir teems with ghosts and gratitude.”

Arts Hub

Rose has mastered the contemporary realist novel. Is there nothing she cannot do with her words and skilled imagination? No vignette or internal dialogue is here that doesn’t enhance the complex tale she is making.”

Helen Elliot, The Age

Rose’s lyrical melding … is masterful. Intriguing as the real-life events of the Lucan story are, Rose transforms it into something far more substantial.”

The Weekend Australian

Heartbreaking and beautiful, Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is a love story brimming with courage and joy against all odds, one that will bring wonder, light and comfort to all who read it.”

Better Reading

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News & Events

News & reviews

White Heart re-released …

Newly released and in bookstores now! My first novel White Heart … published in 1999 and out of print for many years – but now in this beautiful edition. A novel of the magic of childhood and the poignant transition to adulthood for Farley Willow and her brother Ambrose. While Ambrose searches for evidence of […]

The River Wife – new edition

The River Wife is now published in this beautifully designed new edition. The River Wife is the story of a woman who is a fish by night and a woman by day, but when love comes to the river, everything changes. This is the second of my backlist to be published afresh by Allen & […]

The Butterfly Man – new edition

Twenty years after its it was first published by UQP, and continuously in print, Allen & Unwin has acquired The Butterfly Man. It is being released as the first in a new series of all Heather’s novels for adults. The new edition will be published on April 1st. It will be followed by The River […]

Tasmanian Literary Awards

Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is currently shortlisted for the Premier’s Prize for Non-fiction in the 2025 Tasmanian Literary Awards. It is always very special to be recognised for your work in your home territory. Tasmania has been the wellspring of all my writing. The prizes are biennial – so this is a late and […]