CELEBRATE ART: Elaine Haxton, a colourful artist and life
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POETRY SPOTLIGHT: ‘Copley Street’ by 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.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Stephen Orr Long-Listed for the DUBLIN Literary Award
We’re thrilled to announce some exciting news from across the seas this week, as the long-list for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award is released. Amongst a host of stellar books sits our very own Stephen Orr and his marvellous This Excellent Machine. Read on to find out what the judges are saying …
POETRY SPOTLIGHT: ‘Endless Summer’ by Cath Kenneally
This week’s poetry spotlight shines on Cath Kenneally’s new poetry collection, The Southern Oscillation Index.
These poems reflect on travel, on staying at home, on the passing of time, and on our afflicted world. Both tough and gentle, nostalgic and sharply political, Kenneally’s work is enlivened by flashes of gallows humour.
Cover Reveal: Introducing Sara Haghdoosti and 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.
HIDDEN HISTORIES: Causing a stir with Arcadian Adelaide
In 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.
Launching THE FEELING OF BIGNESS by Helen Parsons
When Adelaide’s quasi-lockdown hit in mid-November, the launching of Helen Parsons’ The Feeling of Bigness: Encountering Georgia O’Keeffe was momentarily put on hold. We were so thrilled to be able to have a rescheduled launch in early December.
Launched by Jan Owen, and Emceed by Louise Nicholas, the launch was held on the beautiful grounds of St John’s church on Halifax Street, on a balmy evening befitting Helen’s gorgeous poems.
We are delighted to be publishing Jan Owen’s launch speech from the evening here for all to enjoy.
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.
POETRY SPOTLIGHT: ‘Going Home’ by Geoff Goodfellow
This week’s poetry spotlight shines once again on Australian literary icon Geoff Goodfellow, whose most recent release, Out of Copley Street, received glowing endorsements from Tim Winton and Helen Garner.
‘A rollicking slice of an unlikely life. Watch young Geoff find poetry – and a few scraps of wisdom – the hard way. Ears up, chest out, flat-chat, punching on and wising up.’ – Tim Winton
‘A dry, sparkling clarity, a pure tone that hovers on the edge of laughter: these stories are a revelation.’ – Helen Garner
