Media

News, Reviews and Interviews.

The 2025 Sunday Times Literary Awards longlist

Sunday Times (3 August 2025)


Announcing the longlists for SA’s most prestigious annual literary awards for non-fiction and the fiction award 

The Other Side of Alistair Mackay: Pugs, Chaos and Queer Storytelling

Mambaonline (30 June 2025)

Alistair Mackay is having a moment. The acclaimed South African author, who has steadily built a reputation for bold, emotionally intelligent writing, has just released his new short story collection, The Lucky Ones.

[Video] The Lucky Ones launch at Love Books, Melville

YouTube (27 May 2025)

Jarred Thompson in conversation with Alistair Mackay about his latest collection of short stories, The Lucky Ones

Between the lines: What South African stories reveal about men’s mental health

Mail & Guardian (1 July 2025)

Alistair Mackay’s work mainly explores queerness, mental health, social justice and climate change. In his second novel, The Child, he looks at the complexities of a gay couple returning

[Review] Love, Grief and Time Travel

Business Day (12 June 2025)

The first story in the collection, Fever Tree is one of the most powerful explorations of grief I have read…

10 books to surprise, move and inform you this international LGBTQIA+ Pride Month

News24 (17 June 2025)

A short story collection from the author of the acclaimed novels It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way and The Child, The Lucky Ones crosses centuries and continents, looking at LGBTQIA+ love and the…

[Review] Verhale wat jou sinne en sintuie oopmaak (Afrikaans)

Die Burger / Netwerk24 (14 April 2025)

Review of The Lucky Ones. “This brilliant collection… proves that good fiction doesn’t comfort us. It opens our minds and our senses.”

[Interview] And into this shifting sense of queerness

Knaap.Brief (9 June 2024)

Alistair Mackay and I chat about his sophomore novel, and about how our generation of gay, white South Africans gets to navigate both dashed idealism and eco-futurity.

[Podcast] Interview with Alistair Mackay

The Local Lit Scene (1 November 2024)

Listen as I chat to Alistair, author of The Child, and It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way – a Cape Town Dystopian. We laugh our way through this episode, chat about which of his books would make a good movie, spin off novels, creativity, self doubt and self care.

Interessante punte oor queer-wees in paneelgesprek aangeroer (Afrikaans)

Die Burger / Netwerk24 (8 October 2024)

[Interview] Alistair Mackay’s ‘The Child’ marks a journey of self-rediscovery and atonement

City Press (21 July 2024)

[Excerpt] The Child by Alistair Mackay — the story of a new generation of South Africans

Daily Maverick (5 July 2024)

Review: The Child

LitNet (25 June 2024)

Review: Wat dit beteken om te bly, terug te keer (Afrikaans)

Die Burger / Beeld / Netwerk24 (1 July 2024)

Jacket Notes: Imagining another childhood

Sunday Times (30 June 2024)

Review: Alistair Mackay’s ‘The Child’: the queering of post-apartheid identity and belonging

Sunday Times (14 June 2024)

Book Club: Author Alistair Mackay on his new book The Child

Lunch with Pippa Hudson, Cape Talk (7 June 2024)

Queer Books | Alistair Mackay Talks About New Novel, The Child

Mambaonline (3 June 2024)

Excerpt: The Child (“Adopting a New Relationship”)

Mail & Guardian (23 May 2024)

Brilliant reads to enjoy over the weekend

The Citizen (25 May 2024)

Review: Om jou kastele in Spanje te sloop (Afrikaans)

Vrye Weekblad (10 May 2024)

Review: Outrageously beautiful: Alistair Mackay’s soul-shattering The Child is healing literature

News24 (21 May 2024)

Alistair Mackay ’18 to Publish ‘The Child’ in April 2024

Columbia University School of the Arts (4 April 2024)

Has African Climate Fiction Already Shown Us the Future?

African Arguments (October 2023)

2023 Sunday Times Literary Awards Longlist – Best Fiction

Sunday Times (16 July 2023)

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way” (Dutch)

Het Zuid-Afrikahuis Cultuur en Kenniscentrum (4 May 2023)

Queer Representation in Literature

Panel Discussion with Alistair Mackay, Welcome Mandla Lishiva, and Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane at Time of the Writer Festival (March 2023)

Book Club with Alistair Mackay

A Reader’s Community (March 2023)

Longlisted: Best Novel in the British Science Fiction Association Awards

(January 2023)

The African Writers and Artists Longlisted for the 2022 British Science Fiction Awards

Brittle Paper (23 January 2023)

SA authors (and one from Zim) win prizes, get longlisted.”

News24 (20 January 2023)

Catch up on these excellent South African reads from the past year

Daily Maverick (7 January 2023)

Books of the Year: Start 2023 with these 2022 recommendations

Sunday Times (2 January 2023)

Brittle Paper’s: 100 Notable African Books of 2022

(December 2022)

Mail & Guardian’s: Top 50 African Books of 2022

(December 2022)

Climate crisis & compassion in the digital age – with Alistair Mackay & Akil Kumarasamy

The Empty Chair / PEN South Africa podcast (S6E2; 1 December 2022)

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way’ — a must-read fiction about the very real climate crisis”

Daily Maverick (4 October 2022)

A poetic, resonant nightmare about LGBT rights and climate change.”

Mail & Guardian (22 August 2022)

Climate Dystopia, Homophobia and Capitalism: An Interview with Alistair Mackay“

Gay Pages (Winter 2022)

The apocalypse after the apocalypse”

New Frame (23 May 2022)

Dystopian novel like a slap on the head

(Afrikaans)Vrye Weekblad (29 July 2022)

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way: An Exploration of Apocalyptic Cape Town”

Cape{Town}Etc (27 July 2022)

5 Unscripted with Stephanie Be: The inaugural Book Club”

Interview with Stephanie Be on 5fm (20 June 2022)

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way”

Culture Review Magazine (9 June 2022)

Five Books to Snuggle Up With This Weekend”

Sunday Times Lifestyle (20 May 2022)

Alistair Mackay about his debut novel It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way”

Scaffold: For Queer Creators & Culture (13 May 2022)

Alistair Mackay on his dazzling debut novel”

MambaOnline (11 May 2022)

Ready or not, change is upon us – Alistair Mackay’s debut is a brutal and brilliant dystopian novel in its commentary on the possibility of our collective future”

Sunday Times (8 May 2022)

Present Dystopia“

Panel Discussion with Edgar Pieterse, Alistair Mackay, Kelly-Eve Koopman and Keely Shinners at Open Book Festival 2022 in Cape Town (21 April 2022)

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way – The future is up to us”

Mother City News (4 April 2022)

FEATURED

© 2026 Copyright Alistair Mackay