This month GRAI’s Queer Book Club will be reading Holden Sheppard’s award winning young adult novel Invisible Boys. Sheppard’s debut novel has won a string of awards including The Premier’s Book Award and the TAG Hungerford Award. The book draws upon Sheppard’s own teenage years in his hometown of Geraldton, and tells the story of three […]
More Than Halfway To Somewhere: Collected Gems of a World Traveller John Burbidge Wordswallah (Self-published) Following on from his critically acclaimed works like Dare Me! The Life and Work of Gerald Glaskin and his autobiography The Boatman, Burbidge delves into a travelogue of his world adventures in celebrating his 50th year since boarding a US-bound […]
You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll Viper Warning: This review contains mentions of sexual assault. Paramedic Megan Lowe has half an hour before the end of her shift and is looking forward to having a day off when a call comes in that a male in his fifties has gunshot wounds to his chest […]
Upswell Publishing has launched a new podcast series and the first episode features the amazing James Berlyn, Artistic Director and Executive Producer of the WA Youth Theatre Company. Terri-Ann White spent 14 years as the head of UWA Publishing, when the university decided to scale back it’s publishing arm in 2019, White decided to set […]
She Come By It Natural by Sarah Smarsh Pushkin Press Sarah Smarsh has written a love letter to Dolly Parton that thanks her for her unique cultural presence. Raised by her mother and her grandmother, Smarsh looks her life, and the lives of her mother and grandmother, using Parton’s insights about class, gender and place. […]
Now That I See You by Emma Batchelor Allen & Unwin Something was wrong but she was totally unprepared for her boyfriend Jess to admit to her that they were more comfortable wearing women’s clothes than men’s outfits. She thought of what it took to say those words out loud “to make this admission with […]
Food for the Soul by Lucy Lord Harper Collins Originally from the UK, but now living in Australia, Lucy Lord knows firsthand what it is like to live on ‘convenience foods’. Leaving home at 17 to go to university, she thrived on take away food, snacks and drinks before deciding to shed the weight she’d […]
Poet Ellen van Neerven’s book Throat was the big winner at the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. In a standout achievement, the author won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year. The three accolades come with a combined prize of $60,000. Judges said Throat confirms van Neerven’s place as one of […]
GRAI’s Queer Book Club has selected Throat by Mununijali Yugambeh author, Ellen van Neerven as its book for April. They write fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and play football on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land. van Neerven’s first book, Heat and Light , a novel-in-stories, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary […]
Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith by Richard Bradford Bloomsbury Publishing Born in Texas in 1921 at a time when sexuality was, in varying degrees, hidden and fluid, Patricia Highsmith became famous for writing dark psychological thrillers. Notably, many have been made into unforgettable films – including The Talented Mr Ripley, […]
