Biography and memoir
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir is written as a collection of letters to friends. It’s both exhilarating and exhausting – like a friend calling you up and unloading their dramas onto you – but if you’re patient and let…
Muddy People: A Memoir by Sara El Sayed
Muddy People is the warm and welcoming debut memoir from Egyptian-born Brisbane-based writer Sara El Sayed. As vividly realised as the book’s enticing cover, El Sayed’s stories centre on her relationships with her family (her Mama, Baba, maternal grandmother Nana…
Late Bloomer by Clem Bastow
Throughout her life, Clem Bastow went through periods of intense obsession with dinosaurs, musical theatre and professional wrestling. Fresh out of school, she threw herself into music journalism and feature writing, outpacing just about every other freelancer on the scene…
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel must be the graphic novelist with the richest density of ideas-per-square- inch; no blurb could do justice to the wide-ranging subject matter of her new book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. Taking as its starting point the…
The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar
Amani Haydar is a remarkable woman. A lawyer by training, she is also an acclaimed artist who has been a finalist for the Archibald Prize, and with the publication of her memoir, The Mother Wound, she can add ‘accomplished…
In My Defence, I Have No Defence by Sinead Stubbins
Author and comedian Sinéad Stubbins has created a warm collection of stories to illustrate, very finely, that we all feel unconvinced and insecure at times. As a writer, her particular superpower is clearly the art of observation, and each written…
Whisper Songs by Tony Birch
2021 is the year of Tony Birch, with two new books: one short story collection (Dark as Night, August) and one poetry collection. Birch has always been a beautiful writer, and it feels particularly fortunate that we as…
Real Estate by Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy sits at the top of my list of brilliant women I’d like to have a few drinks with. I imagine we’d sit in a smart London bar, martinis in hand, and across several hours she’d reveal to me…
Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn’t Ours by Sarah Sentilles
If you don’t know Sarah Sentilles, you should seek her out. Go read her earlier books. She’s a writer of uncommonly beautiful creative nonfiction, her pages filled with grace and honesty.
In her award-winning book Draw Your Weapons, she…
Still Alive: Notes from Australia’s Immigration Detention System by Safdar Ahmed
It is difficult to find the right words when you want to recommend a book that made you feel sick with rage. So I will start by telling you how important it is that this book exists,in spite of all…
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