Welcome.
I’m Holly Ringland.
I write stories about beauty, resilience, belonging, and the quiet courage it takes to live and create from the heart.
My books explore what shapes us, what breaks us open, and how we find our way back to ourselves - or transform ourselves - through love, land, memory, and imagination.
MY LATEST BOOK
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
The House That Joy Built grew out of my own creative fear, that stopped me from writing for years, and my desire to learn how to manage it; how to meet what I was so terrified of about creating, with play, permission, and gentleness rather than force.
This is a book about making space for creativity in ordinary lives.
About learning to trust what calls to us.
And about how letting ourselves feel and grow our creative joy, is a form of courage.
This book is for anyone who feels the longing to create, and the fear that rises up alongside it.
👉 Read more / Buy the book
An uplifting, powerful and inspiring book about breaking through fear and finding joy through creativity.
The House that Joy Built is about the pleasure and power of giving ourselves permission to create, and is for anyone who struggles with fear to make the art that calls to their heart.
“A joyous gift from the heart, practical and wise. Blasts those I-can’t-do-this terrors with both barrels.”
“Thank you Holly for bringing even more magic into the world!”
“A non-fiction masterpiece… encourages readers to reflect on their fears and grant themselves permission to create and feel joy… you’ll find sanctuary in this book.”
“What a gutsy and raw book, written with (Holly’s) beautiful creative voice. ”
“I may have sobbed a few times reading Joy… honestly - it’s so beautiful.”
I’m Holly, nice to meet you
I’m an internationally bestselling novelist, based on Bundjalung Country, where I write.
My debut novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, was published around the world and adapted into a global television series. My second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, explores love, grief, and transformation across time and place. My novels have been recognised with awards and accolades, which is extraordinary to me, and, what matters most to me is writing stories that offer readers a deep sense of connection, recognition, beauty, and possibility. You can read more about my work here.
Alongside my books, I host conversations, write essays, and create spaces, on the page and beyond it, for creativity to feel less lonely.
Her internationally bestselling debut novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, has been published in 30 territories. In 2019, it won the Australian Book Industry Award General Fiction Book of the Year. In 2023, a 7-episode TV series adaptation of the same name streamed globally on Prime Video, starring Sigourney Weaver. The series broke records with the biggest opening weekend viewership globally for any Australian launch. It reached the top five in 78 countries, and top 3 in 42 countries.
Holly’s second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, was published in 2022 and became an instant bestseller. Booktopia named it their 2022 Book of the Year. It will be published in 15 territories with further deals to follow.
Holly’s latest book, The House That Joy Built, is her first non-fiction title and has become a national bestseller. Published in 2023, it's part-memoir, part-research, and part-storytelling about the pleasure and power of giving ourselves permission to create. Readers have called it "life-changing". Apple Book Reviews called it a “non-fiction masterpiece”.
In 2021, along with Aaron Pedersen, Holly co-hosted the factual ABC TV series, Back To Nature, which aired to critical acclaim.
BOOKTOPIA’S
2022 BOOK OF THE YEAR
“It’s impossible to come away from this magical story unchanged.’”
A haunting and magical novel about joy, grief, courage, and transformation.
The last time Esther Wilding's beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura's disappearance, Esther's family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister's death, Esther reluctantly travels from Lutruwita/Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands. On her journey, Esther is guided by the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.
The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a sweeping, deeply beautiful and profoundly moving novel about the far-reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin, and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.
“This intercontinental journey into joy, grief, nature and magic confirms Holly Ringland as one of Australia’s most precious, life-changing storytellers.”
“Vivid and soaring … a haunting story of trauma and redemption...”
THE INTERNATIONAL
BESTSELLER
An enchanting and captivating novel about how our untold stories haunt us — and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak.
Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family's story. In her early twenties, Alice's life is thrown into upheaval again when she suffers devastating betrayal and loss. Desperate to outrun grief, Alice flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. In this otherworldly landscape Alice thinks she has found solace, until she meets a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man.
Spanning two decades, set between sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart follows Alice's unforgettable journey, as she learns that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.
NOW ON PRIME VIDEO
THE GLOBAL SMASH HIT SERIES
“...entertaining, moving, and vividly atmospheric...”
“...hypnotic... draws you into a satisfying drama that resonates long after the closing credits.”
