AustLit
- Finding works about COVID-19
- Case study: Where the pandemic is the trigger for production
- Finding BlackWords works about COVID-19
- Case study: Novel coronavirus
- Finding works about epidemics and pandemics generally
- Case study: Children and social isolation
I’m never as nice
I’m never as easy or as simple
as when I am trying desperately to hold back a cough
Huyen Hac Helen Tran, 'A New Type of Story', I Am Not a Virus Project.
AustLit began recording 'COVID-19' as a subject-concept at the beginning of the pandemic, when the team were all working in isolation at home during the global lockdowns. (More information about the scope of this project can be found on the home page.)
The works remain within the broad scope of AustLit's focus, but we have also given consideration to tracking broader effects in the arts sector, such as the postponement and cancellations of theatrical works. (More on theatre in COVID times can be seen here.)
This project originally went live in July 2020, and we continued to track works throughout 2020, 2021, and 2022.
You can view all works tagged with the 'COVID-19' subject here.
These search results will keep expanding as more works are added to the dataset across the period of the pandemic and beyond.
You can also use the table below to access specific types of works.
Anthologies | Newspaper columns |
Picture books | Poetry |
Essays | Short stories |
Drama | Film/TV |
You might also wish to search for works about COVID-19 and other topics. We have listed some pre-set searches below, or you add your own additional topics to this pre-set search field.
Search for COVID-19 and the following topics:
+ disabilities | + travel |
+ emotional and social isolation | + Black Summer |
+ trauma | + conflict in relationships |
Example 1: Infectious Fictions
As its name indicates, Spineless Wonders specialises in publishing works in non-traditional formats, in something other than physical books.
During the initial period of lockdown and social distancing, they gathered short works from their previously published anthologies, and released them, one each day, as audio works, streamed on their website and through SoundCloud.
The works are neither newly written nor inspired by the pandemic, but the specific conditions of their production in this form is directly influenced by the isolation caused by the pandemic.
Example 2: Wish You Were Here!
The brainchild of Professor Kim Wilkins and Dr Helen Marshall in the School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland, Wish You Were Here! Postcards from Future Queensland reaches out to the imagined end of the pandemic.
Inviting works from high-school students across Queensland, the project asks students to imagine themselves at different points within and after the pandemic, and to consider the question we've all pondered at times: what world do we make from this?
Samples of Wish You Were Here! have been published on the project's website and a chapbook of the creators' favourite stories was published by Corella Press.
Penrith Station sits broken
as a grieving heart in pieces
the platform the waystation for
essentially low-paid vital workers
in the dead-days of iso-lation
Tony Birch, 'Waiting for a Train with Thelma Plum', Poetry in Lockdown (Overland)
BlackWords works are included in all the search options in the top section, 'Finding Works about COVID-19.' However, if you wish to explore BlackWords specifically, the pre-set searches below are a good starting place.
Explore all BlackWords works with the subject 'COVID-19'.
Or explore a specific category of works from the table below.
Drama | Poetry |
Children's and picture books | Film, TV, and podcasts |
Short stories | Essays and prose |
To exclusively explore works that are about epidemics and pandemics other than the COVID-19 pandemic, try this search.
The earliest works published about the COVID-19 pandemic and the global lockdowns were, not surprisingly, the shorter works: poems, short stories, and creative non-fiction in essay form. Then came picture books, with a particular focus on helping children understand what a pandemic was, and then helping them cope with the long periods of isolation.
Novels have been a relatively recent addition, and showcase the flexibility of, firstly, self-publishing and, secondly, audiobook-first publishing: Caroline Overington's The Cuckoo's Cry, for example, was released first as an Audible Original.
In these novels, a man lets a pretty stranger into his beachside cottage on the eve of the global lockdown; a romance writer and a scandal-ridden NFL player enjoy a flirtation across their balconies; a woman returns to her small hometown to save a family business struck hard by the pandemic; two sisters try to come to terms with post-pandemic changes to their lives and relationship; and a novelist wonders how we work for posterity when it feels like we're living in the end of days.
Half a trip; half a trip;
Half a trip Homeward.
Right into Tenterfield
Surged the Six Hundred.
Out of the city smoke,
Into the bush they broke
To dodge influenza's stroke
Rushed the Six Hundred.
'A Stranded Toowoombaite', 'The Charge of the 'Flu Brigade', Brisbane Courier, 7 February 1919.
The COVID-19 pandemic has not been the first time Australian writers have grappled with the idea of our vulnerability to infectious diseases, especially in the wake of the Spanish flu outbreak at the end of World War I.
You can explore all works about epidemics and pandemics (which includes works about COVID-19), or choose from the categories in the table below.
Short stories | Poetry |
Drama | Children's fiction |
Novels | Film/TV |
One of the biggest issues coming out of the pandemic was keeping children happy and healthy during the global and local lockdowns, while parents and guardians were working from home, and during home-schooling.
This is reflected in a number of children's books that came out during the pandemic.
For example, Dirt Lane Press (now part of WestWords) made Where Happiness Hides freely available on their website, as 'a gift to the children of the world during social isolation for the duration of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic': it was available in multiple languages, including English, Wiradjuri, French, Marathi, Finnish, Igbo, Farsi, Samoan, Tamil, and Swahili.
Other authors concentrated on the ways in which children could find connection and community even in isolation, from Windows to Love Was Inside.
And others, such as The Corona Kid, encouraged children to find adaptability and strength from their own skills and hobbies.
Explore all picture books and children's fiction about COVID-19.