Wakefield Press is a leading independent publishing company based in Adelaide, South Australia. Wakefield Press has had many incarnations over the years, with the current iteration having turned 30 in 2019.
We publish around 40 titles each year on a diverse range of topics including literary and popular fiction, young adult and middle grade fiction, history, biography, art, poetry, food, wine, the environment and education. Wakefield Press's quality backlist is currently around 800 titles, and our ebook list continues to grow rapidly.
Wakefield Press regularly wins literary, design and production awards. We are also involved in the judging and publication of the Arts South Australia Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award, as part of the South Australian Literary Award (formerly the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature). Previous winners include The Comforting Weight of Water (2021), Roanna McClelland; In the Room with the She Wolf (2019), Jelena Diniç; and A New Name for the Colour Blue (2017), Annette Marner.
Recently, Edwina Preston's Bad Art Mother was shortlisted in the 2023 Stella Prize, and Jodi McAlister's Libby Lawrence is Good at Pretending was listed on the CBCA Book of the Year's Notables list.
In 2022, Jelena Diniç won the Mary Gimore award for In the Room with the She Wolf, Sara Haghdoosti's Sunburnt Veils was shortlisted in the Readings Prize in the Young Adults category, Road Tripping with Pearl Nash, by Poppy Nwosu, was listed on the CBCA Book of the Year's Notables list, and Hometown Haunts, edited by Poppy Nwosu, was shortlisted for the SPN Book of the Year Award.
In 2021, This Excellent Machine by Stephen Orr was longlisted in the 2021 Dublin Literary Award, Hometown Haunts contributor Lisa Fuller won two categories in the Aurealis Awards for her short story ‘Don’t Look!’, and Taking Down Evelyn Tait, by Poppy Nwosu, was shortlisted in the SPN Book of the Year Award.
In 2019, Poppy Nwosu’s Making Friends with Alice Dyson was shortlisted for the Readings Prize in the Young Adults category. Charlie Archbold’s Mallee Boys was awarded Honor Book for Older Readers in the 2018 Children's Book Council of Australia Awards.
In 2016, Red Professor: The Cold War Life of Fred Rose, by Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards Prize for Australian History, and Places Women Make: Unearthing the contribution of women to our cities, by Jane Jose, won the 2016 Bates Smart Award for Architecture in Media.
An Unsentimental Bloke: The life and work of C.J. Dennis, by Philip Butterss, won the National Biography Award in 2015.
We maintain relationships with several international publishers, and have sold rights to our titles around the world, in markets as diverse as Germany, UK, China, South Africa, Hungary, Poland and the US.
We also provide commissioned publishing for organisations, and have ongoing publishing relationships with organisations such as Carrick Hill, SALA festival, University of Adelaide and University of South Australia.
To talk to us about producing a book for your organisation, email publisher Michael Bollen.
We have a national sales rep force, and distribute our titles from our own warehouse to bookshops, library suppliers, school suppliers and gift wholesalers. Internationally, our titles are available to the public via internet retailers such as Amazon, while overseas retailers can obtain many of our titles via the Lightning Source system.
We also sell direct to the public via our website; our bookshop located at 16 Rose Street, Mile End, in South Australia; and by hosting and attending many events.