Category: Behind the book
Acclaimed poet Tracy Ryan’s ninth poetry collection, The Water Bearer, is an intimate exploration of water and its many forms, from filling a second-hand cooler in an old country house to swimming lessons and ocean riptides. In this stunning volume, Ryan explores water as the life-giving and life-taking force that defines our existence.
Fremantle Press is pleased to announce the publication of three new editions of A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey. First published by Fremantle Press (formerly Fremantle Arts Centre Press) in 1981, A Fortunate Life was licensed to Penguin in the same year.
‘You can change anything at all. It is foolish to think there is no light on the horizon.’ Drawn Onward by Meg McKinlay and Andrew Frazer uses a combination of language and typography to demonstrate how to move thoughts from the negative to the positive.
The Holga is a medium format 120 film camera with a meniscus lens that is made in Hong Kong. Sydney photographer Sally Mayman loved the unpredictability of using it for the landscapes and some of the portraits in her new book, Seeing Saltwater Country. In this post, Sally takes you behind the scenes of some […]
Sometimes a book fits into a very specific genre – a genre whose covers have a very specific set of codes that signal to readers what they can expect to find in that book. We all know, for instance, what kind of material will be in a book featuring the upper body of Fabio. But […]
We asked editors Tracy Ryan and John Kinsella to pick us a poem each from The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry. Here’s what they chose.
Benang by Kim Scott is the latest Fremantle Press Treasure. It was the first book by an Indigenous writer to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award and, after nearly two decades, its continued relevance, its scope, language and largeness of spirit shows why it won our most prestigious prize, and why Scott went on to […]
In this guest post, Many Hearts, One Voice author Melinda Tognini shares the importance of remembering the women widowed by war and the achievements that transformed grief into activism.
Jay Martin is one of five shortlisted contenders for the 2016 City of Fremantle T.A.G. Hungerford Award to be announced at Fremantle Arts Centre on Wednesday 2 November. Here is an extract from her shortlisted manuscript called Learning Polish.
Red Read’s life takes an alarming turn when his mother sells him to an infamous smuggler plying his trade off the north-west coast in the closing days of the 19th century. Author Norman Jorgensen provides a sneak preview.
What do you do when you are a young man in the 1990s, fresh out of the army, with a geology degree, and an abiding lust for gold? You go looking for a gold rush!
Fremantle Press author Jen Banyard shares how her father inspired the third book in her Riddle Gully series in this behind-the-scenes look at writing Riddle Gully Secrets.
Kate McCaffrey’s Destroying Avalon was Australia’s first novel to depict the effects of cyberbullying. A decade on, Kate explains why she’s returned to similar territory in her forthcoming book Saving Jazz.
Throughout the 1930s May Holman was a household name and an inspiration to the women of her generation. She made history in 1925 when, at age thirty-one, she became Australia’s first female Labor parliamentarian, holding the seat of Forrest until her untimely death on the eve of the 1939 elections. Thousands lined the streets for […]
Representation matters, including in picture book illustrations. Perhaps especially in illustrations, because children are fluent in the language of art in a way that most adults are not. There is no aspect of an illustration that escapes the attention of a child, and this means that to create art for children is to speak to an audience more attuned to the nuances of representation than yourself. This is one of the reasons why the misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in illustration – or the misrepresentation of other diverse peoples, for that matter – should never be dismissed as being ‘only a picture book’.
Host of Cover to Cover, Meri Fatin, describes the writing of In Love and War: Nursing Heroes by Liz Byrski as almost like a piece of plastic surgery in itself.
Popular children’s book The Last Viking will be read at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington, this November as part of a Nordic Stories series.
Alice Nelson is a novelist who won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award and was named Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist in 2009. Here she talks about her latest book After This: Survivors of the Holocaust speak.
What would you do without the internet? What would your life look like? Who would you be? Brendan Ritchie discussed this and more when we spoke to him about his upcoming novel, Carousel.
High school teacher and celebrated author Kate McCaffrey is best known for her award-winning YA novels Destroying Avalon, In Ecstasy and Beautiful Monster. Her latest book for teens is Crashing Down.
West Australian teachers may already know Jen from the serialisation of Mystery at Riddle Gully in the Ed! Section of The West Australian. Her latest book Riddle Gully Runaway can be read as a follow-up to Mystery at Riddle Gully or as a stand-alone book.
Ray Glickman will return to his previous stomping ground to launch his debut novel Reality at Readings St Kilda on Thursday 3 July. The former Executive Manager for the City of St Kilda said the council loomed large in his portrayal of the central character’s working life.
Author Norman Jorgensen’s research notes on inspiring Viking women.
Getting Warmer author Alan Carter is in Shanghai researching his third novel in the Cato Kwong Series. Here are his top literary spots for the criminally inclined.