‘Readers familiar with Roslynn Haynes’s important earlier book Seeking the Centre will be excited to discover The Australian Desert: Nature, Culture, Future. The new work is a comprehensive and authoritative study of Australian desert culture, placing special emphasis on Aboriginal art and storytelling and what non-Aboriginal people can – and perhaps must – try to learn from Indigenous people about how to live on our increasingly desert-like planet.’

—Scott Slovic, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities Emeritus, University of Idaho, and Editor of Getting Over the Color Green: Contemporary Environmental Literature of the Southwest

‘Bringing together the art, literatures, histories and science of Indigenous locals and Western outsiders, Roslynn Haynes’s luminous prose shimmers like the desert itself, which she places at the heart of Australia. A uniquely multidisciplinary but very readable work of subtlety and deep learning which makes ambivalence a virtue.’

—Associate Professor Richard White, Department of History, University of Sydney, Author of Inventing Australia, The Oxford Book of Australian Travel Writing, Cultural History in Australia and co-editor of Symbols of Australia: Imagining a Nation

Roslynn Haynes is Adjunct Associate Professor of Arts and the Media at UNSW and has published ten books on deserts, literature, art, science, and Aboriginal astronomy. As a graduate of both science and literature, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Roslynn Haynes is fascinated by the intersection of disciplines.