Eaton Hamilton (@eatonhamilton.bsky.social)

Australian author Ellena Savage considers our ecological disinheritance in debut novel, The Ruiners Ellena Savage is obsessed with microplastics. It started when she read A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies, Matt Simon's bestselling 2022 exposé of the global plastic crisis. "It's like a Silent Spring for our generation," the author tells ABC Arts. "It's completely horrific." Savage found herself consumed by the issue. "I read all these books, and I listened to all these podcasts, and I became a complete maniac. I'd be talking to a new person at a party and I'd be like, 'Do you know that you have like a credit card's worth of plastic in your brain?'" She realised her fervour was putting people off. "I'd become quite unpleasant to hang around with," she laughs. Savage had been caught unawares by the success of her 2020 debut essay collection, Blueberries, longlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize. "When I wrote it, I had imagined that about 200 people would read it and they would all be either my friends or my friends' friends, and so when that was not the case, I learned a lot about publishing very quickly," she says. When it came to writing her next book, she felt fiction would... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-09/ellena-savage-author-new-book-the-ruiners/106647696