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Patrick Lenton

@patrick_lenton

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Author & journalist
newsletter: @nonsense.newsletter
In Spite of You’ out now w/ @panterapress
Represented: @rachcrawfordagent

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In Spite of You is officially out! Congrats queen! You can now walk into any bookshop or library and find the book I wrote just hanging out with all the other books. So weird. People have been sending me photos of it in the wild and let me tell you: that’s the best feeling in the world.

Come celebrate at my launches!

Massive thanks to my agent @_loujohnson_ , and the good people at @panterapress, especially @lexhirst 💖 by @patrick_lenton

I’m very shy and reclusive and mostly keep the details of my life very private, but unfortunately the only way to connect with people on social media these days is to create a parasocial relationship. So here’s my introduction to the #bookstagram community, where I’m finally revealing the enigmatic man behind the mystery… by @patrick_lenton

My goal in life has always been to have a job that slightly confuses my hairdresser, such as explaining that for the past three months I’ve been Domain’s official @theblock recapper, and I just spent the entire weekend working in a bustling press room covering the finale? I was in a big tent watching the auction live, which combined two of my least favourite things: being in a tent and men screaming numbers at me. But I persisted! And Australia got the block coverage it deserves. Another inexplicable career bingo moment. Anyway, I wrote a lot of recaps and I got to have fun by @patrick_lenton

My phone is obsessed with sorting photos of my boyfriend and I into a folder called “best friends” which is really funny to me - so I wrote about it for the @guardianaustralia

My phone thinks we’re friends with benefits (but the benefits are a stable and loving relationship).

It’s also a gentle refutation to all the nerds currently attacking the structures we’ve put into place to increase queer visibility - pride flags, Mardi Gras, IDAHOBIT and wear it purple days.

You can read the full article in my bio! by @patrick_lenton

One of the best things about my Italy holiday is that I was travelling with my boyfriend who loves reading as much as I do, so there wasn’t a single day where we didn’t block out some time for it. We’d go explore an ancient ruin and then eat arancini in a park with our books after. And the villa we got with our friends in Sicily was long days in the sun drinking wine that tastes like the ocean and reading in hammocks. Perfetto. As a result, I read quite a bit, and also because my cortisol lowered for the first time in a while, I felt like reading new books, instead of re-reading, which I do a lot of. There’s also some other books I started and didn’t finish, but hey, I’m not a book reviewer, I can keep that energy to myself.

Actually, I don’t tend to write about books I like very much online, except when I’m providing official endorsement quotes. This is for a few reasons:

1. I’ve been an arts and culture journalist for a lot of my career, AND worked in publishing before that, AND combine this with the very small nature of Australia’s writing and publishing scene and how many of my friends are fellow authors, and I felt like I could get myself into some tricky ethical quandaries if I wasn’t careful with drawing a strict line between reviews, endorsements, and personal reading. Personal preference!

2. There was a period of my career where I was best described as a pop culture journalist with a specialty in TV culture writing. In this period, I actually got to the point where watching television made me feel slightly ill, and I remember feeling guilty because I was procrastinating from watching an episode of something so I could read a book, which for many people, is backwards logic. SO, as a result, I made the decision to never turn reading - my favourite thing in the entire world - into work. Already being an author blurs that line, but I decided to never write book reviews or cultural criticism about books for journalism work so I could avoid the TV fate, with a couple of small exceptions (I had a long running column where I read every book Rory Gilmore read in Gilmore girls for example)

3. I’m a fucking author and it drives me fucking insane th by @patrick_lenton

Last time I hung out with @joshhortinelawriter he took us on a trek through the city late at night, only to eventually end up in a dark bar where we were literally sat behind real prison bars in a room full of pictures of haunter dolls. In most cases, I’d have been scared and suspicious, but Josh is a literal ray of sunshine and I didn’t even worry for a SECOND. This is one of the reasons why I’m so excited to chat with Josh as part of @mountainfestivalmacedon in November, where we will be talking all things queer romance book related. Come why not?

Saturday 14 November 2026
10:30 am 11:30 am
Squishy Minnie Bookstore
6 High Street Kyneton, Victoria by @patrick_lenton

My favourite shot from my Italy trip, but I’ll stop now, I’m on a plane by @patrick_lenton

If you ever get the chance to celebrate Savanh, your dreamy boyfriend’s 40th birthday, by getting a beautiful farmhouse deep in the hills of Sicily with a bunch of friends, then I can only recommend you do it because it’s sublime. If these photos are just annoyingly lovely, keep swiping until you find the Sicilian ceramic tribute to 9/11z by @patrick_lenton

Ciao Palermo! We visited a very old opera house that has a myth of a ghost nun who supposedly trips people over and then an old man fell over, so it wasn’t nunsense after all.
One day we sat in the botanic gardens reading on a bench and it was just like the final scene of Notting Hill, and I was Julia Roberts except I was full of pasta instead of pregnant by @patrick_lenton

When in Rome! Old things and handsome boyfriend who speaks fluent Italian, wine and eating gluten pasta for the first time in a decade without exploding - perfetto. The last photo was me drunkenly imitating a seagull who clearly realised he was being mocked and stood up straight at the last moment by @patrick_lenton

September! Birthday month! I aged! I’m only becoming more powerful by @patrick_lenton