Every thriving reading community needs good bookshops, and good booksellers. In our Meet the Bookseller series, we introduce you to some of Australia’s most loved booksellers, starting with our own local community of Adelaide. If you’d like to nominate a bookshop or bookseller to be featured, please let us know in comments, or email maddy@wakefieldpress.com.au.

Next up is Jason Lake, veteran bookseller and co-owner of the iconic Imprints Booksellers on Hindley Street. Read on to find out what he loves about being a bookseller, and how he first got into the business of books.

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Every thriving reading community needs good bookshops, and good booksellers. In this new series, we introduce you to some of Australia’s most loved booksellers, starting with our own local community of Adelaide. If you’d like to nominate a bookshop or bookseller to be featured, please let us know in comments, or email maddy@wakefieldpress.com.au.

First up, meet an Adelaide bookselling icon: Graham, the reigning book detective behind the Dymocks Adelaide special orders counter. Read on to find out what he’s reading, and what makes his bookshop different from others.

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Wakefield Press is delighted to announce the acquisition of world rights to Roz Bellamy’s Mood, a memoir exploring the intersections of mental illness, queerness, gender diversity and Jewish identity.

Bellamy is the online editor at Archer magazine and has just completed the prestigious US literary publisher Tin House’s Summer Workshop, working on the manuscript for Mood.

Last year, Mood was longlisted for the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. An earlier version was shortlisted for the Scribe Nonfiction Prize. 

Read on to discover more about this exciting new acquisition, and to hear Roz’s thoughts on joining the Wakefield Press team.

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Stephen Orr has always been a supporter of the arts in Australia. His award-winning Time’s Long Ruin was adapted into Innocence, an Australian opera, in 2013. In this special guest piece for the blog, Stephen laments the fate of Australian stories, and how we’re losing the battle to keep home-grown culture alive.

Read on for his thoughts on the arts in Australia.

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Victor Harbor: Down beside the sea is the fascinating story of how Victor Harbor came to be, told by the people who live and work in this breathtakingly beautiful coastal locale.

Compiled by Deb and Ron Kandelaars, Victor Harbor represents years of research, memories and experiences from the people and places that make Victor Harbor what it is today.

Earlier in the year, Deb and Ron delivered a wonderful talk to a captive audience, explaining the provenance of the book, as well as sharing some of their favourite stories from within its pages. They’ve been kind enough to share their words with us on the blog – read on to find out more.

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Arts legend Winnie Pelz, AM, artist, writer, arts administrator, and current affairs presenter, has written a wonderful response to Elaine Haxton: A colourful artist and life, Lorraine Penny McLoughlin’s biography of the late Australian artist.

Winnie has been kind enough to share her words with us, and has given permission for us to republish them here.

Read more about Elaine Haxton in Poppy Nwosu’s own response to the book here.

Cover image: Mexican Fields, 1939 (detail)

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As part of South Australia’s History Festival this year, the David Roche Foundation House Museum displayed a special exhibition: Captain Cook and the Art of Memorabilia. Accompanying the exhibition was a special presentation by various speakers discussing Aboriginal accounts of Captain Cook.

One of the speakers was Wakefield Press author and academic Peggy Brock (Colonialism and its Aftermath (editor), Yura and Udnyu). Peggy has kindly allowed us to reproduce her fascinating talk, ‘Too Many Captain Cooks’, here on the blog. Read on to delve deeper into this controversial figure’s place in the context of historical pandemics.

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