Hello. Thanks for visiting. You may have come here to read about The Loneliness Project 2025: my global research into why loneliness is now an epidemic across the Western world. There are interviews with people from all over the world, newspaper features, radio interviews, and magazine articles on my findings, plus the link to my Churchill Fellowship Report.
You can also access the archive of my 400 newspaper columns written for The West Australian’s Weekend Magazine, or find out more about my best-selling books: ‘How To Shame The Devil’, (Night Parrot Press, 2021), ‘Was It Something I said’ (UWA Press, 2014). You’ll also find a collection of my internationally published short stories. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
Writers and readers must meet, so please contact me if you need a speaker for your next event, or you’d like a guest appearance from an author at your next book club.
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All By Myself - The Australian Weekend Magazine
In a world of 8.2 billion people, there’s an epidemic of loneliness. What’s causing it - and can it be solved?
15 Feb 2025
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Solitary: How to Beat Loneliness
The published report of Ros Thomas’s global findings into why loneliness has become a worldwide public health crisis.
22 Nov 2024
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ABC Podcast - The Bright Side with Sabra Lane
In this episode Sabra Lane speaks with Ros Thomas about some of the novel solutions to the world's loneliness epidemic, including artificial intelligence, intergenerational housing, and medical intervention.
21 Aug 2024
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6PR Podcast - The Nightshift with Tod Johnston
Ros Thomas chats with Tod Johnston about her travels investigating loneliness for the Churchill Fellowship.
20 Aug 2024
A record number of people across Australia are experiencing loneliness. Politicians and policymakers are grappling with what can be done. But the lonely themselves are rarely part of the conversation. Until now.
“A strikingly original voice. Ros has the full writer’s arsenal. Her prose has a sensual joy.”
— Robert Drewe
Hi. Ros here.
I’m a Perth author, television and print journalist of 35 years, best known for my five year stint as the weekend columnist for The West Australian Newspaper. For two decades prior to that, I was an investigative journalist for Channels Nine and Seven and the ABC’s 7.30 Report. In 2015, my first book, Was It Something I Said —a collection of readers’ favourite columns— was published by the University of WA Press and became their bestseller of the year. My first novel How to Shame the Devil, (Night Parrot Press, 2021) went on to become a WA bestseller and is now in its third edition. I’m also a big fan of writing short story and flash fiction. In 2021, I landed the UK STAUNCH Prize for the best international flash fiction of the year. My award-winning short stories have been published in three UK anthologies.
In October 2023, I was given a Winston Churchill Fellowship to study the epidemic of chronic loneliness sweeping the Western world. In 2024 I travelled to England, Sweden, the Netherlands and the US to study global best practice interventions, publishing an extensive 250-page report on my findings last last year. With any luck, 2025/26 will see the completion of a new novel manuscript Cloud Eight, begun many moons ago in 2022. If you’d like to read more about my Fellowship research, click the link below.
https://www.churchilltrust.com.au/fellow/ros-thomas-wa-2023/
So this year, look out for me. You’ll find me most mornings tucked into corners of cafes around Perth and Fremantle, deep in thought, deep in good coffee, writing and rewriting my sentences on an 6-year-old laptop. Here are some other facts about me.