The Mushroom Tapes, Mad Mabel and Memorial Days triumph at book awards
Key takeaways
- Three respected authors — Sarah Krasnostein, Helen Garner and Chloe Hooper — joined forces to write the now-award-winning The Mushroom Tapes.
- ABC Arts book critic Declan Fry described The Mushroom Tapes as a "monster of a true-crime book".
- A book that transcribes the conversations between Garner, Hooper and Krasnostein has just won the prize for non-fiction at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs).
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Three respected authors — Sarah Krasnostein, Helen Garner and Chloe Hooper — joined forces to write the now-award-winning The Mushroom Tapes. (Supplied: Text/Darren James)
Link copied Share Share article In May 2025, three of Australia's most respected literary true-crime writers set off on the almost two-hour drive from Melbourne to Morwell in regional Victoria.
Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein have written on subjects as diverse as the trial of Robert Farquharson, the Black Saturday bushfires, and the daily work of trauma cleaners, and boast a Baillie Gifford Prize, Melbourne Prize for Literature, Wyndham-Campbell Prize, Victorian Prize for Literature and a handful of Walkleys between them.