UQP

Most Anticipated Books

The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2022: Apr – Jun

Somehow it’s April already, with Easter coming up just next week. And in our opinion nothing pairs better with a chocolate egg and a long weekend like a good book.  To help you decide what to read next, we at the AU Books Team are here to pick out some choice cuts from the many…

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If You're Happy

Book Review: Fiona Robertson’s debut collection If You’re Happy explores lives that are anything but

“They are having sex when the wind starts up, whispering and sighing outside.” So opens the first story in Fiona Robertson‘s Glendower Award-winning collection, If You’re Happy. The University of Queensland Press team are no strangers to publishing powerful short fiction that challenges the conventions of the form in this country; counting among their authors…

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The Sorrow Stone

Book Review: Kári Gíslason’s The Sorrow Stone is a compelling re-imagining of a violent Icelandic saga

After a vicious act of revenge, Disa and her son are on the run. Desperately seeking safe passage to the home of her brother’s wife, Aud, Disa looks back at her life, and to the litany of passions, tragedies, and betrayals that have led her here. At once brutal and elegant, The Sorrow Stone is…

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Sarah Walker

Book Review: Sarah Walker examines the not-so-pretty sides of life in The First Time I Thought I Was Dying

At times unsettling but decidedly open and honest, Sarah Walker’s collection of essays The First Time I Thought I Was Dying explores the often-taboo aspects of life and living. Told from her perspective as an actor and photographer, the collection examines the awkwardness, the disgustingness and the discomfort of our bodies and minds in a…

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Best Books 2021

The Best Books of The Year: 2021

2021. We had high hopes. But it’s been another year of uncertainty and upheaval – albeit perhaps not as bad as last year. It has been another strong year for books and publishing, with some big names returning with new books: Colson Whitehead, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Sally Rooney to name just three.  It’s also…

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After Story

Book Review: Larissa Behrendt dissects complex family relationships in her entrancing new book After Story

Larissa Behrendt doesn’t pull any punches in this poignant but difficult examination of family relationships, racism, and the justice system. After Story is a captivating tale about a mother and daughter trying to reconnect after years of tragedy, trauma and secrets have created rifts between them. Bookworm Jasmine is a lawyer and the first of…

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Tony Birch

“Whatever you’re writing about, the story has to work. It has to be a good story.”: Author Tony Birch talks about his latest collection Dark As Last Night

Professor Tony Birch is the bestselling and award-winning Australian author of The White Girl, Ghost River, Blood, Shadowboxing, Father’s Day, The Promise and Common People. In 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award. An activist, historian and essayist, Birch’s latest short story collection Dark As Last Night was released by the University of Queensland Press in August 2021. We caught up…

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Dark As Last Night

Book Review: Tony Birch explores pivotal decisions in everyday moments in Dark As Last Night

Tony Birch once again proves he is the master of short fiction in Dark As Last Night, a collection of sixteen slice of life short stories that range in time, tone and focus. In his trademark style, which brings the world to life with vivid but simple descriptions, Birch explores the various chances we’re given…

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Anticipated Books

The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021: Jul – Sep

We’re over halfway through the year. How are your 2021 reading goals going? Have all the mini snap lockdowns around the country had you turning to a good book? We’re back to take a look at a handful of the new titles coming out across the next couple of months. With so many books published each…

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Smokehouse

Book Review: Melissa Manning’s Smokehouse is a warm debut that’s hard to pin down

Melissa Manning may be based in Melbourne now, but her connection to Tasmania resounds strongly throughout the stories in her debut collection, Smokehouse. Told in the form of nine interlinked tales, the book follows the lives of a number of residents of a small Tasmanian coastal town. At the centre (and also bookending the collection) is…

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Dropbear

Book Review: Past, present, and Australiana come under the microscope in Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear

Poetry and prose, critique and compassion all come together in Dropbear, the debut collection from award-winning writer, poet and editor Evelyn Araluen. It’s a remarkable collection; smart, thoughtful and articulate. To put it frankly, it comes as a surprise that this is Araluen’s debut book. Dropbear explores the imagery and mythology surrounding popular ideas of…

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Born Into This

Book Review: Adam Thompson’s Born Into This spotlights Tasmania and its people

The Tasmanian landscape and a whole host of engaging, charming and well drawn characters populate the stories that make up Born Into This, the debut short story collection from Adam Thompson; an emerging Aboriginal (pakana) author from Tasmania.  The collection comprises sixteen stories, often brief, but always impactful. In spite of this brevity, Thompson is…

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Best Books of 2020

The 14 Best Books of 2020

By now it goes without saying that 2020 has been a rough year. From wildfires to a global pandemic there has disruption and upheaval on a scale rarely, if ever, seen in “peacetime”. Pretty much every sector of society has taken a hit this year. And the publishing world, as with much of the Arts…

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Only Happiness Here

Book Review: Gabrielle Carey searches for the secrets of happiness in the pages of a near-forgotten writer

Gabrielle Carey may have written more in the field of biography, but is best known as the co-author of Puberty Blues, written alongside Kathy Lette. Her latest offering, Only Happiness Here: In Search of Elizabeth von Arnim combines the straight accounting of the twentieth century writer’s life with a form of literary analysis and memoir that has…

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Mammoth

Book Review: Chris Flynn’s Mammoth is a novel of great wit, imagination and science

Mammoth, the new novel from author Chris Flynn, is a witty and compelling mash-up of historical and science fiction, with gags and subtle ecological (and more) messaging nestled side by side.  On the face of it, Mammoth, sounds bold, audacious and something that shouldn’t really work. A sentient Mammoth fossil tells his life (and after…

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Book Review: Meg Mundell’s The Trespassers shows a dystopian future with links to Australia’s past and present

You might be forgiven for thinking that there are echoes of the past in Meg Mundell’s newest novel, The Trespassers, as a boatload of British folk board a boat bound for Australia to escape overcrowing, unemployment and disease at home. Instead, it’s the not-too-distant future. Among the passengers are our three protagonists: Cleary, nine years old and…

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Book Review: Andrew Stafford’s new memoir takes us back to rock ‘n’ roll high school

Long before The Ramones were co-opted for an ad, they were a punk band who appealed to suburbanite teens. Andrew Stafford was one such fan, which his memoir, Something to Believe In proves. Across the book’s pages he takes readers to rock ‘n’ roll high school, educating them on all matters of music and madness…

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Melissa Lucashenko takes home the 2019 Miles Franklin

Brisbane based writer Melissa Lucashenko has been awarded the Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel Too Much Lip, beating out five other shortlisted works to the $60,000 prize. Lucashenko’s win makes her the third Indigenous author to take home the prize, alongside past winners Kim Scott and Alexis Wright. Published by UQP, Too Much Lip follows…

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Interview: Elizabeth Kuiper talks Little Stones, Zimbabwe, representation and creative journeys

Earlier this month saw the publication of Elizabeth Kuiper’s debut novel Little Stones. The novel, which draws upon Kuiper’s own childhood experiences, follows the story of Hannah, a young white Zimbabwean as she navigates everyday life in a country under the control of Robert Mugabe.  Following the novel’s release we sat down with Elizabeth to…

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Book Review: Omar Sakr’s The Lost Arabs is an intimate, passionate and timely collection of poetry

Omar Sakr’s The Lost Arabs was one of my most anticipated new releases for the year. It has more than lived up to expectations, which isn’t always the case. It’s intimate, vibrant, beautifully composed and engages creatively and powerfully with a whole host of concerns and themes intrinsic to understanding the modern world.  The Lost…

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Book Review: No stone has been left unturned in Elizabeth Kuiper’s Little Stones

Little Stones might be the debut novel from Australian writer Elizabeth Kuiper, but it won’t be her last. The novel, of which an early version was long listed for the Richell Prize, published in Award Winning Australian Writing and received the Express Media Prize for the best work of fiction, marks the arrival of a new voice in Australian writing. One…

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Book Review: David Malouf’s An Open Book is a well crafted and emotive collection from one of Australia’s finest

An Open Book, published late last year, is the eleventh collection of poetry from David Malouf, and his third in the last ten years. Prior to this collection I only really knew of Malouf in his capacity as a writer of prose and short stories. As it turns out he is equally adept in many…

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The 16 Best Books of 2018

We’ve come to that point of the year where things begin to wind down for the year, and where those of us in the business of reviewing and writing about art, music, books and films stop and begin to agonise over our “Top 10” or “Best of” lists.  2018 has been another great year in…

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Book Review: Sally Piper’s The Geography of Friendship proves some journeys require walking the same path again

The Geography of Friendship, the second novel from author Sally Piper, tells of the journey of three young girls, Samantha, Lisa and Nicole, who set out on an adventurous five-day hike as teenagers. Three young girls who found and befriended each other at school, because no one else had, or would. Their frightening adventure starts…

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