Tegan Bennett Daylight is a writer, teacher and critic who has published three novels: Bombora, What Falls Away and Safety, as well as books for children and teenagers. Her collection of short stories, Six Bedrooms, was published in July 2015, and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal, the Steele Rudd Award and the 2016 Stella Prize. Her book of essays, The Details: On Love, Death and Reading, was published by Scribner in July 2020 and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Non-Fiction. She works as a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Western Sydney University, and lives on Darug/Gundungurra land in the Blue Mountains.

Tegan’s YA novel Royals tells the story of six teenagers (and a baby) trapped in a parallel universe – only this parallel universe is a shopping mall. Royals was published by Simon & Schuster in May 2023 and shortlisted for the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature.

How to Survive 1985, a stand-alone YA novel but also the sequel to Royals, was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2025. The same six teenagers find themselves 40 years in the past, loving the music, hating the hair, and noticing all the changes we’ve seen and made since 1985. You can find the How to Survive 1985 Spotify playlist here.

You can also find Tegan’s latest essays on life (and flipping the bird) in The Guardian, and on books in The Saturday Paper and the Sydney Review of Books, or go straight to the Non-Fiction page on this website.