KAREN COMER is an author of books for young adults and younger readers. Her new young adult book, a novel in verse, is Once Upon Tomorrow. It tells the story of three girls from three different times from the past, present and the future. Their parallel journeys and their fates intertwine.

We caught up with Karen to find out where she writes and what inspires her.

WHAT’S ON KAREN COMER’S DESK?

My desk is the place I collect ideas, plan outlines, research sparks, write stories and edit drafts. I also use my desk to edit other writers’ books, create workshops and talks, and manage all my life admin. This desk of mine holds many stories – literally and figuratively.

I keep the practical and the inspirational on my desk. The practical essentials include water, tea, my planner, a notebook and pens.

The inspirational – just as essential – are a book of poetry, a candle, a writer badge from a friend, crystals, a plant, mushrooms made by my daughter and a set of Matryoshka dolls my mum gave me decades ago when I wrote a school assignment about them.

My art journal is both practical and inspirational – I make one for each book I write. It’s a way for me to collect my fragments of ideas, to take away the fear of the blank page with coloured paper and washi tape, and to meander around with my ideas in contrast to writing to a linear plan.

I like to think that my scraps of ideas talk to each other, connect with each other and form creative alliances!

About half of the notes in my art journal don’t make it to the final book. But I need those early wild ideas to hone the final ideas and words – if I didn’t make space for all my ideas early in the creative process, they wouldn’t spark the final ones.

DETAILS:

Set of Matryoshka dolls: In Year 12, I wrote a creative piece for an English assignment about Matryoshka dolls – I used the image of the dolls as a symbol for our many different selves, even though I had only seen the dolls in shops. When I finished Year 12, Mum gave me a set of Matryoshka dolls. I keep them on my desk to remind me of the faith Mum had in me and my writing when I was a teenager.

Mushrooms: My daughter made me a trio of mushrooms from clay when I was writing Once Upon Tomorrow – one of my characters is interested in mycology, the study of fungi. I appreciate my daughter’s creativity and thoughtfulness and like to think of these mushrooms sending their mycelium threads deep into the earth, deep into my unconscious, looking for ideas.

My art journal: The Forest Library page in my art journal was one of the first pages I created. I had watched a talk by author Margaret Atwood about the Future Library of Norway, a library set up to collect one hundred manuscripts over one hundred years – all to be published in the hundredth year. A forest had been planted around the library in order to fell trees to make paper for the hundred books. This is the backbone of Once Upon Tomorrow – an Australian reimagining spanning one hundred years, about libraries, forests, climate change and family legacies.

Once Upon Tomorrow by Karen Comer is published by Lothian, rrp $19.99

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Comer is an author, freelance editor and speaker. She teaches a ten-month online writing course and offers mentoring and editing to writers at all stages of their career. She has worked in educational publishing and was the editor for children’s art magazine BIG. Karen’s latest book is Once Upon Tomorrow, published by Hachette in April 2026. A YA verse novel, it focuses on the future, libraries, climate change, fairytales and family.

Her young adult verse novel, Grace Notes, won the CBCA’S Book of the Year for Older Readers 2024 and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adults and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Ethel Turner’s Prize for Young People’s Literature 2024. Karen hopes to introduce more readers to the lyrical wonders of verse novels.

She lives in Melbourne with her family.

Visit Karen Comer’s website here.

Follow Karen Comer on Instagram.

Visit the Hachette website here.