“Don’t you like to write letters? I do because it’s such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you’ve done something” – Ernest Hemingway

Going through a dusty box of old treasures recently, I came across a bundle of letters. Some were gossipy missives from teenage friends; others were aerogrammes sent by family when I was exploring Europe in a Kombi van in the mid-90s.

The latter were marked “poste restante” ­– which, for anyone younger than 50, meant they could be collected from the post office in a city you were visiting in a time before mobile phones and email made it easy for travellers to stay in touch with home. Just imagine!

Today, those fragile pieces of paper, some scrawled with the handwriting of loved ones since lost, are a personal portal to the past, more precious than any email or text received in the many years since.

“Finding a handwritten letter addressed to you is a singular experience,” American writer Virginia Evans was recently quoted as saying.

“You think, ‘I am sought out. I am seen’.”

Evans is author of The Correspondent, a novel about the extraordinary life of a retired lawyer told entirely through letters which has spent 33 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and this month won the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

The Correspondent has also been credited with helping drive a revival in the so-called lost art of letter writing.

Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent is a story told entirely through letters.

Although technological advances have dramatically changed the way people communicate – Australia Post says less than 3 per cent of letters today are sent by individuals, as opposed to businesses and official bodies – Evans believes handwritten correspondence is irreplaceable.

“I almost think, are we having a bit of a moment of people realising that it could stand to be lost, and then people trying to pick it back up again? Maybe,” she told The Independent after her Women’s Prize win.

It’s not just older generations who are putting pen to paper.

Pinterest’s 2026 global trends forecast predicted a “letter-writing renaissance” this year, with gen Z and millennials turning snail mail into “authored art”.

“Your inbox is about to get jealous of your letter box,” the social media platform declared.

@alessiaeart getting a head start on the October letters because I’ve got so many to send off 🥹💗 if you’d like to join for this month, you’ve got until the 31st to sign up 🌷 link is in my bio 🌟#smallbusiness #snailmailclub #snailmail ♬ About You – The 1975

“Snail mail clubs” have been trending on TikTok for a while, and are an entirely different concept from the penpals of old.

Club subscribers sign up to receive a regular delivery through the post of a letter (usually typed or printed and photocopied rather than handwritten) and other items ranging from art works and stickers to journal prompts, sometimes around a particular theme.

Google Trends data shows searches for “snail mail club” increased 700 per cent in the past 12 months, Business Insider reports, while in the same period Pinterest recorded a 245 rise in searches for “snail mail ideas” and 125 per cent for “letter ideas”.

“I think people really crave connection, especially offline,” Australian artist Alessia E, who started snail mail club CloudyClub, told Triple J’s Hack program last week.

“People get really sick of, like, social media, doom scrolling.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Lost Letter Club💌 (@thelostletterclub)

Hack also spoke to Jennette, the host of a Melbourne initiative called The Lost Letters Club, which holds regular events for women centred around “letter writing, reflection and quiet connection”.

In an online letter to perspective subscribers, Jennette enthuses about the “value and beauty” of the written word, especially personal letters:

“It’s a different type of communication. It’s a far cry from a ‘how are you’ text. And although I’m grateful for technology and all it offers us, this is about keeping the art of letter writing alive for us and for the next generation.”

Groups where like-minded people meet up to write letters together have also popped up in other places across Australia.

Announcing the introduction of its letter-writing circle several months ago on Instagram, the Hunter Writers Centre in NSW promised it would offer “a gentle, welcoming space to pause, reflect, and put pen to paper”.

“In a fast world of texts and emails, we’re reclaiming something slower, softer, and deeply human — the art of the letter,” it said.

Nostalgia and a yearning for simpler times has fuelled a range of other throwback trends – from “nonnamaxxing” to the “what were you like in the ’90s” viral videos ­– so it is perhaps not surprising that people are discovering, or rediscovering, a love for not just letters and snail mail, but also retro skills like calligraphy.

Hopefully, the revival will last longer than your average TikTok.