Explore the best of the backlist with MWF 2023 authors

You know their recent release – and you've booked your ticket to their upcoming MWF appearance! – but if you’ve only recently discovered the author’s catalogue, perhaps you're curious about what came before their latest work? Well, we’ve done the digging and are recommending books to discover from these MWF author backlists.


Gabrielle Zevin

So, you’ve just finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow?

From Zevin’s backlist we recommend her lauded and bestselling 2015 novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.

A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and a prized rare first edition has been stolen.

But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His – and Maya’s – is changed forever.

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Emma Straub

So, you’ve just finished the gut-punching This Time Tomorrow?

From Straub's backlist we recommend the family saga, All Adults here.

Alice Stern isn’t ready to turn forty. She thought she’d have it figured out by now, and have spent more time with her father Leonard, who is very sick. When she wakes up outside their old apartment on her birthday, she’s surprised to see a much younger Leonard, with a sixteenth birthday card for Alice, who is rapidly approaching adulthood.

Alice soon realises she can keep coming back. Faced each time with different versions of her life, and the consequences of her decisions, Alice must not lose sight of what she wants most: some time back with Leonard.

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Claire Keegan

So, you've sped through the Booker-nominated, Small Things Like These?

From Keegan's backlist we recommend Foster.

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, not knowing when she will return home. In the strangers’ house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. But in a house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers how fragile her idyll is.

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Charmaine Papertalk Green

So you've been musing on Green and Kinsella's most recent collaborative poetry collection, ART?

From Green's backlist we recommend exploring the ALS Gold Medal-winning work, Nganajungu Yagu.

'Nganajungu Yagu was inspired by Mother’s letters, her life and the love she instilled in me for my people and my culture. A substantial part of that culture is language, and I missed out on so much language interaction having moved away. I talk with my ancestors’ language - Badimaya and Wajarri - to honour ancestors, language centres, language workers and those Yamaji who have been and remain generous in passing on cultural knowledge.' – Charmaine Papertalk Green

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Richard Fidler

So you've travelled alongside Fidler in his most recent epic, The Book of Roads and Kingdoms?

From Fidler's backlist we recommend where it all began, Saga Land.

Richard Fidler and co-author Kari Gislason are good friends. They share a deep attachment to the sagas of Iceland - the true stories of the first Viking families who settled on that remote island in the Middle Ages. These are tales of blood feuds, of dangerous women, and people who are compelled to kill the ones they love the most. The sagas are among the greatest stories ever written, but the identity of their authors is largely unknown. Together, Richard and Kari travel across Iceland, to the places where the sagas unfolded a thousand years ago. They cross fields, streams and fjords to immerse themselves in the folklore of this fiercely beautiful island.

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Pip Williams

So you've relished your return to the past within the pages of The Bookbinder of Jericho?

From Williams' backlist we recommend her bestselling debut, The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Esme spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid’ flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it. This small act will change everything.

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Ellen van Neerven

So you're hanging out to read Ellen van Neerven's nonfiction debut, Personal Score?

While you wait, we recommend their debut poetry collection, Comfort Food.

Moving between places and cultures, Comfort Food explores identity, sovereignty and the restless quest for love. Using food as their inspiration, van Neerven offers a cross-cultural vision of the exotic and the familiar. This sensuous volume sets a new benchmark in contemporary Australian poetry.

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Cover image for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Gabrielle Zevin

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