Shortlisted, 2025 NSW Literary Awards - Indigenous Writers' Prize<br/><br/>Longlisted, 2025 Stella Prize<br/>Highly Commended, 2025 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - Indigenous Writing<br/>'Vivid and inventive fiction, full of thought-provoking contests of ideas and values, that expands possibilities for First Nations literature.' The Age<br/>'The stories in Always Will Be were crafted with care, respect and humour. They are in equal measures enlightening and entertaining. This collection is a must-read in 2024.' The Conversation<br/><br/><b>In this stunningly inventive and thought-provoking collection, Mykaela Saunders poses the question: what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?</b><br/><br/><b>Each of the stories in <i>Always Will Be</i> is set in its own future version of the Tweed. In one, a group of girls plot their escape from a home they have no memory of entering. In another, two men make a final visit to the country they love as they contemplate a new life in a faraway place. Saunders imagines different scenarios for how the local Goori community might reassert sovereignty - reclaiming country, exerting full self-determination, or incorporating non-Indigenous people into the social fabric - while practising creative, ancestrally approved ways of living with changing climates.</b><br/><br/><br/><b>Epic in scope, and with a diverse cast of characters, <i>Always Will Be</i> is the ground-breaking winner of the 2022 David Unaipon Award. This is a forward-thinking collection that refuses cynicism and despair, and instead offers entertaining stories that celebrate Goori ways of being, knowing, doing - and becoming.</b><br/><br/>