Trent Dalton takes Love Stories to the street and stage (2024)

Bestselling author Trent Dalton has a lot going on, and a lot of love to give.

After the screen adaptation of his debut novel Boy Swallows Universe devoured the Logies with five wins on Sunday, the writer is returning to the streets of his home town Brisbane with his typewriter to collect the city's love stories.

It's a project he first started in 2021, spending two months on the busy corner of Adelaide and Albert Streets with his 1960s Olivetti, talking to strangers about love that endures, is lost, or unrequited.

These tales became yet another bestseller for Dalton, the joyous collection Love Stories. He's returning to King George Square on September 6 as part of the Brisbane Festival to do it all again, this time joined by 20 aspiring writers.

Will there be another book in it? There will at least be an exhibition at the Museum of Brisbane, where people can read these freshly collected stories and pen their own.

Brisbane may not enjoy the reputation of Paris as a city of love, but Dalton promises it's one of the most romantic places in the world - during the first Love Stories project, hundreds of people opened their hearts to him.

"You can never underestimate the people of Brisbane and their capacity to love ... honestly, every person you pass has a love story," he told AAP.

The project's revival marks the stage adaptation of the Love Stories collection, premiering at Brisbane's Playhouse during September.

Just as Boy Swallows Universe made it to the stage, the small screen, and then the Logies, Love Stories could be on a similar journey - if the stars align.

By the same team behind the adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe, the stage play includes dozens of tales from the book, tied together with an overarching narrative of a Husband (played by Jason Klarwein) and Wife (played by Michala Banas).

Dalton, who has been married to his wife Fiona Franzmann for 24 years, admits the truth of why he started collecting love stories is he needed a few lessons in love himself - at times, he admits, he has taken his own relationship for granted.

In creating the dialogue for the play, he and Franzmann went back through their old text messages and emails, reflecting on their arguments and disagreements, but also on the wonder of their own long-term love.

If audiences thought Boy Swallows Universe was revealing, with its characters inspired by Dalton's drug-addicted mother and various criminals from his childhood, the Love Stories play is the most honest thing he has ever written, the author said.

"Good art comes from really exposing your flaws as well as hopefully some of the things you shine at ... it's your darkness and your flaws that actually make a human interesting."

It's these flaws Dalton addressed in an emotional Logies speech pitched to all the mums in the suburbs who feel "lost in the darkness".

"Please believe me when I say that when your children look at you in the darkness, all they see is your light," he told them.

With the timing of a master storyteller, he wrapped with a sentiment that was both very Logies and very Trent Dalton: "I love every person in this room right now."

Love Stories runs at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre September 8 - 29.

Write your heart out runs August 30 until September 29 at the Museum of Brisbane, with pop-up Love Stories event in King George Square September 6.

Australian Associated Press