Dakota Warren’s new novel is a tale of sapphic obsession

It was the day of the rapture when I met Dakota Warren for lunch. “Do you remember when the world was meant to end in 2012?” she grinned. “My friends and I were all in a huddle, crying and saying goodbye.” 

It felt fitting to meet the Australian poet-turned-novelist on what could be the last day of humanity as we know it. Warren first made her mark with On Sun Swallowing, a diaristic DIY poetry collection that migrated from intimate blog to cult object. What distinguishes it isn’t just confession but control: images that bloom then bruise in an intimate tale of self-devouring and self-destruction. The independently published anthology went viral, becoming a finalist for the Goodreads best poetry book of 2022, and proving that internet-native lyrics can carry genuine formal tension. The pages plead to be annotated – with lipstick, highlighter, whatever your fingers find first – but also leave an aftertaste: sickly and moving.

Warren’s next act was just announced last month: Be Happy I Am Mad, a heat-haze sapphic novel set in 1960s Australia, coming spring 2027. The literary internet lit up accordingly, and when Warren herself soft-launched the project on Instagram, it was met with the kind of feverish comment thread you only get when readers already feel owned.

That cult-like following transcends admiration. Nowhere Girl Collective – her monthly zine publication – functions as a community platform where she curates emerging voices with the same rigour she applies to her own. With a hometown of London, the collective hosts community events for young artists across the UK. For Warren, writing is a craft and a compulsion. If the world were ending today, she would probably keep writing, cataloguing the light as it flickers. She’d etch her words into the world even as it burned. Devastation is her register, not because she craves spectacle, but because she’s attentive to aftermath: what love, faith and obsession do to a body once the sirens stop.

Fortunately, the rapture never came for us, and we survived long enough to discuss Catholic aesthetics, queer reckoning, and the vampiric classics that shaped her voice.

Tell me about growing up in rural Australia – did you always want to be a writer?

Dakota Warren: I always wanted to be a writer, I think because I was always so isolated. I grew up in very isolated places, in a myriad of tiny rural towns in farming country, so my friends were more or less just big open paddocks with sheep and lambs. I was always inventing stories to pass the time because I spent so much time in the shearing sheds with my grandparents, just sitting around and waiting for something to happen.  

My mum was big on that as well – she had me at 19 and was always reading, so it was like two friends talking about books. It was written in the stars from the beginning. 

I was not allowed technology or anything like that, so I was forced to think. I’m grateful for it. It’s so interesting now, like, the whiplash, living in a city like London, but I'm enjoying it. It’s still a novelty to me to live in a large city.

How did your first book On Sun Swallowing become a cult object?

Dakota Warren: It was kind of like a beautiful experiment from the beginning. I had a blog with a very small but loyal following. It just so happened that one of my subscribers reached out to me and said they’d love to publish my book as a lockdown experiment. We thought we’d sell 50 copies to family and friends. Then everything went crazy; it went absolutely insane. I was posting the behind-the-scenes of creating this book, reading the poems, and talking about the books I was reading that had influenced it. By the power vested in the world by the internet, it went viral. It went on to be a bestseller and a finalist for the Goodreads Best Poetry Book of 2022. It catapulted my career from nothing, zero to 100. It was crazy. I’m the luckiest girl in the world. 

I never want to write anything with an iPhone in it [...] If I’m reading a book and it mentions COVID or iPhones, I’m out

My copy got ripped apart by my dog when it came through the post. I taped it back together but it still has bite marks all over it – it feels fitting, though.

Dakota Warren: I did a photoshoot with my copy for the press tour so it’s now stained with fake blood. I love it.

I always get freaked out because a massive red flag for me is when you go to someone’s house and you see all of their books and none of the spines are cracked. I always break the spine. I think it’s insane when people don’t dog-ear pages or annotate stuff. It's like, don’t you want this book to be loved? Don’t you want to be loved? 

Your writing is ultra-personal and diaristic. How did you get to 1960s rural Australian with your recently announced first novel, Be Happy I Am Mad?

Dakota Warren: My main thing is that I never want to write anything with an iPhone in it. I’m really anti-postmodern devices in books. If I’m reading a book and it mentions COVID or iPhones, I’m out. Without giving away too many spoilers, a big trope in the novel is miscommunication, and you can’t have that when there’s all this technology. The only communication you have is driving or cycling to their houses and speaking to them. There’s a lot more opportunity for bad things to happen.

The 1960s is also just such a fun time to write about because of the political climate — we have the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the assassinations are starting, as well as all of these mysterious deaths and conspiracy theories. In 1967, in Australia, Harold Holt, the Prime Minister, went for a swim and never came back… Plus, everyone was being prescribed amphetamines. It’s just the perfect set-up for a spiral of coming of age and being queer against this backdrop.

What does it mean to set a queer love story in the 60s and publish it now? Were there any themes that transcend the time period?

Dakota Warren: The main element of queerness that I wanted to explore was the reckoning – when you first realise that you might be queer… The panic, the dread, regardless of whether you feel like you’re safe or not, is fundamental. When I first had my eye-opening queer experience, I felt like I had to stifle a lot because I was raised religious. I wanted to have a comparable situation, one where you’re afraid to be yourself.

It was really interesting researching this time period because chemical castration was still legal in Australia and everybody was terrified and traumatised from the war. I draw a lot upon the relationship the protagonist has with their parents because they are traumatised from living through two wars, and so things that are progressive, they just don’t have time for. I really had to get into the head of why they were so anti-identity and expression. It was pure survival mode. I suppose there are still elements of that now, but thank God we’ve moved a long way from that.

A lot of your aesthetic imagery is quite heavily influenced by your Catholicism. Does it influence your writing?

Dakota Warren: I think it’s the kind of thing where, if you’re raised in it, it seeps into everything you do. It is interesting now, seeing all these trends where Catholicism is hot right now. I’ve had times where I’ve left the church and gone back to it. Sometimes I get comments like, ‘oh yes, one of those girls playing Catholic’. No guys, I was born into this. I think it also says a lot about where we are. We’re all terrified of the world right now, so everyone’s drawn to these symbols of something that could mean more. It’s kind of beautiful in a way, as long as it’s well-intentioned.

We’ve been calling this moment a sapphic renaissance – does that phrase feel expansive to you, was it something you were intentionally speaking to?

Dakota Warren: I love the term sapphic renaissance, but hate that it implies that there was a gap where there was just no sapphic literature. I was literally writing to cope with those feelings. With your first love or entanglement, it can be very intense, especially realising you might be queer for the first time. I wrote to come to terms with that experience.

We’re all terrified of the world right now, so everyone’s drawn to these symbols of something that could mean more

You very much romanticise the writing process – for yourself and thousands of others – is that a key part of your process?

Dakota Warren: Absolutely, it’s kind of funny because whilst I do romanticise it massively, it’s also because I am living my goddamn dreams. I have this incredible audience, it’s kind of like an army of people who also romanticise writing and want to be doing the same thing. It’s cool to be a mascot for that dream.

Nowhere Girl Collective is a salon, zine, oracle, and soft cult. Why did you create it?

Dakota Warren: Nowhere Girl Collective came from my blog and wanting to give back to the community that has supported me. If I can come from the middle of nowhere in rural Australia and do this, then everyone can. It seemed like the natural thing to do to use my platform to publish others. It’s such a foundational step for writers to have something published in their name. It’s also just so nice to have this beautiful embodiment of community work. 

Every month, it takes me about four days to read through everything. I don’t get any money from it and I wanted it to be accessible to all countries and all ages and anyone who wants to write. It just brings me joy. It’s so special.

What’s one piece of literature you wish you’d written?

Dakota Warren: De Profundis by Oscar Wilde. It’s a collection of letters he wrote to his ex-boyfriend while he was in prison for being gay. It’s about his love and his hatred and his relationship to religion and queerness. Read it if you haven’t. It’s such a beautiful thing.

What is the final sensation you want to leave your readers with?

Dakota Warren: I want them to feel a little bit sick.