An Ocean and a Day
New book announcement: An Ocean and a Day
AN OCEAN AND A DAY, publishing in 2026, is a personal memoir I’ve written over the course of a decade.
In 2014 my husband, Matt, died in a surfing accident off Tamarama beach in Sydney. The memoir pivots around this day, going back more than ten years to when Matt and I first met, and forwards ten years to a moment sitting on the beach where he died.
It is, of course, a raw depiction of my grief, but it is also a reflection of what happens beyond the early years of loss, when time and distance have offered some perspective and the intense pendulum swing of grief has softened.
This isn’t just a love letter to my late husband. It is a love letter to my journey into motherhood, and to the balm of creative endeavours. It is a memoir about marriage and family, home and identity and I hope, more than anything, an honest portrait of learning to live with sudden loss.
Grief is, of course, as individual as the people we mourn, but my desire to share now is driven by the comfort I gained in reading other writers’ meditations on love and loss, and my hope these words might offer companionship to a broken heart looking for a light in the dark. Perhaps too they might contribute in some way to the conversations we have about how we face the hardest days of our lives, and how we discuss and process death in our modern, often secular age.
“An Ocean and a Day is my heart on the page. It is my most personal writing yet, a long form piece written over ten years that captures my attempts to reckon with an all-consuming grief and to tether myself in a world turned upside down. While it includes the raw immediacy of sudden loss, it also includes meditations on the shifting weight of a grief carried over time, distance and experience.”
Hannah Richell, (a quote from the press release)
AN OCEAN AND A DAY has been acquired by Catherine Milne at Fourth Estate (HarperCollins) in Australia, and by Carolyn Mays at Bedford Square Publishers in the UK. I’m grateful to Sarah Lutyens, for finding such safe and compassionate hands to steer my memoir. It publishes in July in ANZ and on 27 August in the UK.
“This memoir had me transfixed from the very first page. I read it in the privacy of a quiet, dark house in one marathon session, finishing it messy crying with tears streaming down my face. I love it for its vulnerability, the beauty of the writing, and its many gritty little pearls of insight and hard-won wisdom.”
Catherine Milne, Fourth Estate, HarperCollins Australia
“Hannah writes beautifully, and with her novelist’s eye for the simple detail of character and setting turns unbearably raw grief into a luminous memoir - the most personal of stories - that’s poignant, positive and impossible to put down. To write something so powerful and so instantly engaging is a rare achievement, and I can’t wait to bring An Ocean and a Day to the readers who will be affected by it as I was.”
Carolyn Mays, Bedford Square Publishers
Yes, I’m daunted to reveal so much of myself on the page, but I am mostly proud and hopeful. If you read AN OCEAN AND A DAY, I hope you find comfort and love within its pages.
(And don’t worry, if you are purely here for the thrills, there’ll be a new thriller out in 2027.)