Adrian Hyland Bio

Born in 1954 in Melbourne, for many years Adrian Hyland lived in outback communities across Australia. He graduated from Melbourne University after studying literature, classics and Chinese language. 

He spent 10 years living in very remote indigenous communities, working in the Tanami mostly with the Warlpiri people and has said in interviews that the indigenous sensitivity and awareness of country has never really left him, and even when writing, the connection between country and the people is never far from his mind. 

Adrian Hyland was living in St Andrews, Victoria when the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires ravaged through the area. In 2011 he published the non-fiction Kinglake 350, an account of the experiences of Acting Sergeant Roger Wood, a local police officer who was in charge at Kinglake on the 7th February 2009. The book was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for non-fiction in 2012. 

Goal: First novel by 50 – Diamond Dove

Adrian Hyland had always loved writing, and he had dozens of notebooks filled with notes and various writings. After going through them for about three months, he sat and wrote his first novel based on his memory from those notebooks. That book was Diamond Dove, and it won the 2007 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel after being accepted quite quickly by Melbourne publisher, Text.

Since then, Adrian Hyland has published 6 books, with the latest, The Redline, in December 2025.

Central female characters

In both the Emily Tempest series and Canticle Creek, Hyland uses female protagonists. In the Emily Tempest series, Emily is a feisty part aboriginal woman, the daughter of an Aboriginal mother and a white father, and in Diamond Dove she is uncertain where she belongs between the aboriginal world and whitefeller society. In the first novel, she is an amateur detective, and in Gunshot Road, the second book in the series, she takes the job of Aboriginal Community Police Officer and investigates the possible murder of an elderly geologist, which deepens her relationship with her community. The Emily Tempest books blend crime fiction with social commentary through an authentic portrayal of outback and Indigenous community life.

Meanwhile, in Canticle Creek, Jesse is a white police woman from the Northern Territory who is deeply connected to the indigenous communities and culture.

Adrian Hyland books in publication order

Emily Tempest series

• Diamond Dove (2006)

• Gunshot Road (2010)

Diamond Dove was published as Moonlight Downs in the United States, and Outback bastard : Kriminalroman in Germany.

Jessie Redpath series

• Canticle Creek (2021)

• The Wiregrass (2023)

• The Redline (2025)

Canticle Creek involves two bodies and a town dealing with the aftermath of crime. The Wiregrass is a follow-up set in a fictional town during stormy weather, following Nash Rankin, a disgraced cop caring for local wildlife. Together, these books return to Hyland’s clash between corporate greed and the natural world, including climate change and wildlife poaching.

Non-fiction

• Kinglake 350 (2011)