RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS WITH: Elizabeth Hutchins

 Rapid Fire interviewIn our author interview series RAPID FIRE, we’re getting to know our authors a little better by throwing a few quick questions at them. Next up to the plate is Elizabeth Hutchins, author of Troop Train.

Troop Train is a moving and uplifting family saga, inspired by the stories of those who lived through the war in the Adelaide Hills. It is based on Elizabeth’s careful research studying newspaper articles, books, memoirs and historical collections – and talking to those who were there.

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RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS WITH: Lisa Walker

 Rapid Fire interviewIn our author interview series RAPID FIRE, we’re getting to know our authors a little better by throwing a few quick questions at them. Next up to the plate is Lisa Walker, author of Trouble is My Business, the next Olivia Grace mystery.

Lisa talks about her current 1960s-flavoured reading habits, the book that most inspired the character of Olivia Grace, and something she wished she’d known about publishing before getting started.

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GUEST POST: Would you like a dash of sunshine with your noir? by Lisa Walker

We’re celebrating the publication of Lisa Walker’s new young adult fiction novel this week, Trouble is my BusinessThis second Olivia Grace novel is another rip-roaring mystery, with nods to Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, and a flavour of Veronica Mars. This Byron Bay set caper will definitely keep you warm this winter!

The release of Trouble is My Business coincides perfectly with an exciting announcement from Sisters in Crime. Lisa’s first Olivia Grace mystery, The Girl with the Gold Bikini, has been shortlisted for two awards in this year’s Davitt Awards! Lisa has been shortlisted in both the YA and debut crime category.

Both Olivia Grace mysteries are set on the Gold Coast and in Byron Bay, where sunny facades hide deeper, darker stories. Read on for Lisa Walker’s thoughts about ‘sunshine noir’, and setting her teen detective novel on the sun-drenched east coast of Australia.

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POETRY SPOTLIGHT: ‘Marta Saulnier’ by Peter Bakowski and Ken Bolton

Poetry Spotlight: Nearly Lunch

Our spotlight shines on a new poetry collection by Peter Bakowski and Ken Bolton, Nearly Lunch.

Fresh off the press, Nearly Lunch is another collaboration from these two poets, after their previous Elsewhere Variations (also published by Wakefield Press), which is a companion volume.

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Wakefield Press acquires award-winning Adelaide author Andrew Roff’s debut collection

Acquisition of Third Heaven by Andrew Roff

Wakefield Press is delighted to announce the acquisition of world rights to the debut collection by Adelaide author Andrew Roff, winner of last year’s Peter Carey Short Story Award, via agent Martin Shaw of Shaw Literary. Publication of the collection, provisionally titled Third Heaven, is projected for 2022.

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CELEBRATE ART: Elaine Haxton, a colourful artist and life

Celebrate Art: Elaine Haxton

This week, we are celebrating the extraordinary life of artist Elaine Haxton, with a new book Elaine Haxton: A colourful artist and life by Lorraine Penny McLoughlin.

This gorgeous art book showcases the range and quality of Elaine Haxton’s work, asserting her rightful place as a significant twentieth century Australian artist.

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POETRY SPOTLIGHT: ‘Copley Street’ by Geoff Goodfellow

Preparing for Business, Geoff Goodfellow

This week’s spotlight shines on a new poetry collection by Geoff Goodfellow, Preparing for Business.

Award-winning poet Geoff Goodfellow is back with another vivid, affecting, laconically dark-witted collection that pulls no punches as it masterfully chronicles Australian life.

As always, Geoff delivers a series of brilliantly captured portraits of working-class life, from the street scenes of formerly industrial Port Adelaide and his home suburb of Semaphore, with its heightened blend of affluence and poverty, to his fearless inhabitations of teenagers beset by home lives that feature domestic violence and addiction.

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Cover Reveal: Introducing Sara Haghdoosti and Sunburnt Veils

Cover reveal, Sunburnt Veils

We’re delighted to officially reveal the cover to Sara Haghdoosti‘s YA debut novel, Sunburnt Veils, a ‘love story with a hijabi twist’, which Wakefield Press will publish in April 2021.

Sunburnt Veils is a smart, funny, character-based exploration of Islamophobia through a heroine who’s the kind of girl who reads at parties, but pushes herself to take a visible stand against racism after a fellow student calls in a bomb threat on her first day of university.

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HIDDEN HISTORIES: Causing a stir with Arcadian Adelaide

Hidden HistoriesIn this third installment of Hidden Histories, we travel back in time to 1905 Adelaide, when Scottish-born actress and satirical writer Thistle Anderson first published Arcadian Adelaide to quite a stir in sleepy Adelaide.

Published again in 2020 for a modern audience, this hilarious little volume, intended by its author as ‘a playful skit’, is to be taken with a pinch of salt … or perhaps savoured, stubbornly, with a glass of excellent Adelaide wine.

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Wakefield acquires second YA novel in Olivia Grace mystery series by author Lisa Walker

We’re delighted to officially announce the acquisition of world rights to Trouble is My Business, the second Olivia Grace mystery by author Lisa Walker, acquired from the Jane Novak agency. The young adult fiction novel will be published by Wakefield Press in September 2021.

Trouble is my Business follows Lisa’s previous instalment in her mystery series about Gold Coast teen PI Olivia Grace. The first book, The Girl with the Gold Bikini, was published by Wakefield Press in February 2019.

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