Published in 2025
144 pages
After being born in a snowstorm in Boulder, Colorado, and raised in the baking summers of Western Australia, Annie Raser-Rowland ran away to Melbourne in search of Art. She found it; grew cynical about it; became a professional horticulturalist, an amateur ecologist, and a passionate long-distance hiker. Journeys up many volcanoes and across several deserts ensued. At some point she became cynical about life without art, and started writing.
Her interest in human relationships to landscape led to teaching workshops on foraging, which led to co-authoring The Weed Forager’s Handbook: A Guide to Edible and Medicinal Weeds in Australia and the children’s book Let’s Eat Weeds: A Kids’ Guide to Foraging. Lust for life and extreme scepticism about consumption as a route to contentment led to writing The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide To Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More.
These days, Annie has run away back to Western Australia, where she’s working on her sunburn, her backstroke, and how to think better thoughts about the Anthropocene. She has recently published the novel Once (shortlisted for the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Award). A second novel and a book about human-animal interactions are taking shape, and are providing endless joy and anguish.
What is this book about?
A volcano erupts and famine takes hold. A young girl steals an axe and makes her way in the world. Pollen is released, microorganisms multiply, two children must fend for themselves in the forest. Observing it all is a storyteller who straddles past and present.
ONCE is a retelling of a tale you already know. In this telling, humans are only one thread within a vivid tapestry of lifeforms responding to calamity.
An exciting fiction debut from author Annie Raser-Rowland, ONCE is a genre-bending work of eco-fiction that paints a compelling portrait of the tender, terrible interconnectedness of our world.
