Mabel is one of four aspiring professionals who will work with publishing hosts from around Australia in an initiative that aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to our industry. Administered by the Australian Publishing Association (APA), the internship focuses on providing real-life experience and pathways for a long-term career in publishing.

Alex Allan, CEO of Fremantle Press and Vice President of the APA, said the program was an essential part of attracting and retaining talent. She said, ‘We have to make our industry more accessible for people from diverse backgrounds in order for us to reach readers and writers from all walks of life. This is an industry often fed by unpaid internships undertaken by people who can afford to do so. This paid internship allows more people the opportunity to try publishing as a career.’

Alex said Mabel, with her already impressive background in writing and editing, was the perfect fit. She said, ‘Mabel will undertake projects for both editorial and marketing to give her the broadest possible understanding of how independent publishing operates.’

Mabel Gibson is a Yamatji woman living, reading and writing in Western Australia. Mabel’s writing has been featured in multiple anthologiespublished by Magabala Books, Portside Review, Artery Zine and Night Parrot Press. Mabel has been invited to writers’ festivals across the country, including Emerging Writers Festival and Festival of Fiction. In 2024, Mabel was awarded a grant to undergo a mentorship with Night Parrot Press, as well as write her debut book CryBaby.

Fremantle Press and UWAP will collaborate on the project, each hosting Mabel for a quarter of a year. Other host publishers include Allen & Unwin, Cambridge University Press, Giramondo, Hardie Grant Publishing and UQP.

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From celebrated voices to emerging talent, this year’s program explores themes of love, identity, history, satire, crime and more. It’s a celebration of the stories that help shape how we see the world.

Hosted by ABC Radio, in partnership with Fremantle Press, UWA Publishing, Magabala Books, Copyright Agency Limited, Hachette Australia, Centre for Stories and Beaufort St Books, this is your chance to enjoy a live literary show, meet the authors and snap up some fabulous reads.

View the program below and book your tickets via Humanitix: https://events.humanitix.com/big-day-of-books-perth-2026

This project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

PROGRAM

Two Hearts, Two Cultures: Many ways of knowing and sharing

Inventive and heartfelt – three writers share the experience of inhabiting multiple worlds. Big Sky: When Emu Left the Earth is a meeting of science and holistic knowledge as Bruce Pascoe and astrophysicist Professor Ray Norris share two ways of knowing the sky. Trials of Hope weaves Ethiopian heritage and language with poetry and prose to tell the story of Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes’s journey from shepherd boy to university human rights director, and Olivia de Zilva’s Plastic Budgie contains stories that expand and contract around questions of self and family, and how our memories form us.

Supported by Centre for Stories

Indestructible Love

Three powerful writers invite readers into stories about deep and abiding love. In Rebirth: A Love Story from the Depths of War by Anton Issa, Laila’s dreams of marrying Nicolas, a coiffeur at the local hair salon in Beirut, are derailed when the Lebanese Civil War breaks out. The Hair of the Pigeon by Mohammed Massoud Morsi takes us from the Syrian Civil War to the suburbs of Copenhagen, where Ghassan finds comfort and reunion with those he thought were lost. In I Remember Everything by Fiona Wilkes, Billie finds her chosen family, only to lose them to an epidemic and find them again through her stories.

Wuthering Words: Reimagining the classics

A panel in which three audacious new novels challenge our notions of historical fiction. Inspired by Lorna Doone, The Names of a Hare by Bernice Barry ponders what life would be like for neurodiverse woman at the height of the witch trials in Cornwall. Cast Away by Francesca de Tores reimagines the extraordinary true story of Alexander Selkirk, inspiration for the novel Robinson Crusoe. The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan takes us to rural France, where the Beast of Gévaudan is poised to plunge the continent into war.

From Invisible to YEAH!

Award-winning writer Holden Sheppard has come a long way since his early days in Geraldton – and so have his characters in Invisible Boys. Join him as he shares his new book Yeah the Boys – a bold, propulsive new novel about male friendship, masculinity, modern gay life and the first gay male AFL player – in this feature interview with Claire Nichols from Radio National’s The Book Show.

Sleepless in Satire: Comedic books for the chronically unrested

From life in the Big Apple to life on the wards, and from housing crises to emotional outlets, these novels are the antidote to life’s challenges. In Kill Your Boomers by Fiona Wright, Keira is languishing in a mouldy sharehouse while nannying a pair of wealthy monsters. In Nadine Browne’s Gone Guru, Noni Barlow has imposter syndrome at her new writing school while the spiritual man she was subletting from has disappeared. Meanwhile, in A Little Unwell by Kerry Jewell, Amy is helping people and saving lives in between sobbing her heart out in the ED toilets. These three writers have found ways to find lightness in the dark times and comfort in the truly uncomfortable.

Supported by Hachette Australia

How Do You Take Your Crime? Hardboiled or with a side of marshmallow?

No matter the genre, a crime writer has to get their plot dead right every time. Whether it’s a 1951 police procedural that opens with a pile of clothes on a Queenscliff beach (Steven Carroll’s The Afterlife of Harry Playford), an escape room game show with a murder on set (The Escape Game by Tamara Moss) or a crime novel about the high stakes that come with easy money, old friends and murder (The Gambler by J.P. Pomare), the author is responsible for taking the reader on a heart-stopping ride every single time.

The post The Big Day of Books is back for 2026 appeared first on Fremantle Press.

Listen here: https://audioboom.com/posts/8904546-imagining-the-past-2026-dave-warner

The post Dave Warner on Imagining the Past: a podcast episode with a twist appeared first on Fremantle Press.

Join contributors Carol Foley, Deborah Green, Barb Hostalek, Lois May, Valerie Swift and editor Casey Mulder for the launch of this beautiful and moving collection.

Launching on Monday 29 June at Subiaco Library at 6.00 pm, this special panel discussion brings together the book’s contributors as they share their stories and inspire us with their strength, honesty and courage. Books will be available for sale at the Dymocks Subiaco book stall after the event.

Bookings are free, please reserve your spot on the Subiaco Library Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/author-talkbook-launch-worlds-within-a-world-tickets-1990373482666?aff=oddtdtcreator

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18 July, 10.00 am

Coffee With Crime Mt Barker: Alex Thorpe plus Louise Wolhuter and Kate Emery – Free (not yet online but keep an eye out on Books in the Brewery’s Eventbrite)

19 July, 2.00 pm

Books in the Brewery Sunday Session, Wilson Brewing Co., Albany: Molly Schmidt, Alex Thorpe, Louise Wolhuter and Kate Emery – Free

https://events.humanitix.com/books-in-the-brewery-albany

6 August, 6.30 pm

Alex Dook in conversation with David Whish-Wilson at The Red Room, Leederville – Tickets from $10

https://events.humanitix.com/nothing-personal-alex-dook-in-conversation-with-david-whish-wilson

24 August, 6.00 pm

New Ways Through the Hard Parts panel, The Red Room, Leederville featuring Gerard McCann plus Marny Lishman and Casey Beros – Tickets from $10

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/1990167645000?aff=oddtdtcreator

The post Fremantle Press authors in upcoming Books in the Brewery events appeared first on Fremantle Press.

How did you choose which poems went into this collection? At what point did the idea of the travelling seed become the organising principle?

When I approached Fremantle Press, I had written about 10–15 poems that perhaps unconsciously were reflecting the mental and emotional work I had been doing at the time, reflecting on my ancestors and family history, and my sense of place and responsibility on Nyungar Boodjar. Once these original poems were selected and I was commissioned to write the rest of the book, I realised where my heart was leading me and that I wanted to lean into these themes further. I asked myself: what do I want out of writing this book? And the answer was healing, connection and truth-telling. With those goals in mind, I set about writing a list of ideas and books I wanted to read. I also had a bunch of poem ideas and one-liners I’d been writing for the last couple years in my Notes app on my phone that I was now finally motivated by a deadline to finish. In the end, I wrote more poems than I needed, so the ones that I cut were usually because they felt disconnected to the overall themes.

The title Song of the Shadow of a Seed came to me quite quickly in a moment when I was trying to express the feeling of what I was writing in one line. There was a sense in my poems of feeling invisible, inadequate, uneducated, unalive, and the only way to visualise that was the spiritual notion I felt that before we are born, we are all specks of spirit floating around, waiting to be born and begin a new life. That was how I was feeling, so small, I was barely the shadow of a seed. I mentioned this title idea to my mum, and all credit to her, she immediately started researching ‘seed shadows’, which is a real, scientific concept that models how far seeds fall away from their parent plant and in what conditions they thrive in. It was a perfect metaphor to lean into for this book, and I took Mum’s idea for the overall structure and ran with it, researching the life cycle of plants, and using this journey of a seed to end the collection on a message of hope and transformation.

Who are the poets that you read?

Mostly First Nations legends like Charmaine Papertalk Green, Elfie Shiosaki, Jazz Money, Jack Davis, Uncle Alf Taylor, but also John Kinsella, Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. I love listening to or reading the writing of local, emerging poets in our community, like members of the First Nations Writing Group at Centre for Stories.

While writing my collection, I had a lot of fun diving into older, classic poetry and drew ideas from individual poems by Alexander Pope, Emily Dickinson, Allen Ginsburg, William Blake, Jonathon Swift and Andrew Marvell. More recently, I was greatly inspired by Naag Mountain (2024) from Manisha Anjali.

Why is truth-telling important? Why is truth-listening important too?

Truth-telling is important because, if done well, it leads to healing, empowerment and redress for First Nations peoples who are still facing ongoing impacts of colonial violence. The problem is that many of our truths are actually already out there in public and political domains—in our movies, books, paintings, in the countless federal royal commissions and inquiry reports into the ‘Aboriginal problem’. Many of the problems that mob are facing have been shared to a large extent, they just haven’t been addressed. That’s why truth-telling can’t effectively occur unless truth-listening is given equal attention and focus. Truth-listening ensures First Nations stories are heard in ways that lead to systemic change, adjust power dynamics and give control and self-determination back to our peoples. It means non-Indigenous people take action after hearing those truths, and ensure those acts of colonial violence and their legacies don’t happen again.

I think once First Nations are truly heard, then our key message of ‘listen first and foremost to Boodjar, to Country, which Australia has so horrifically destroyed and ignored\’ will also be achieved. This will lead to Australians totally redefining ourselves and our systems of governance, so that we return to ways of being that live in custodianship and balance with Country and each other.

What do you hope that readers gain from your work?

I hope readers walk away feeling inspired to explore their own family history and traditional cultures, and through this, build a deeper sense of duty and care to the land on which they live, and respect for First Nations Elders and custodians.

What is next for Luisa Mitchell?

I would like to write another book, and then another one, and so on! I don’t feel like poetry is the only genre I will work in. I always dreamt of writing fiction, YA and children’s picture books, but perhaps there will be some academic research and non-fiction writing one day too. I’m very passionate about the power of education and I would love to learn some animation skills so I can turn my stories into short films as well.

Song of the Shadow of a Seed is available now from all good bookstores and online.

The post Healing, connection and truth-telling: Luisa Mitchell talks about the journey of a seed in her debut poetry collection appeared first on Fremantle Press.

In this interview, Fiona reflects on the importance of remembering queer elders, writing authentically, and creating characters from life.

What prompted you to tell the story of the generation of queer elders above you?

I was reading a lot about this period, and I realised both how much I didn’t know about it and also how much my peers don’t know about it. I started ruminating on that and realised that there is almost an entire generation of queer folks above us that we have had no access to, because this awful thing happened. I wanted people my age and younger to be able to connect to this lost generation and take guidance from them as much as we can. So I wanted us to remember what we’ve lost but also reflect on what we might gain from knowing about those who came before us. And that’s also why I have the characters of Aunt Sarah and Greg in the book too, to go another generation or even two back and learn from them. Queer folk have always been here, yet so little is known about our histories. This is one tiny attempt to tell the story.

What research did you do to make this story feel authentic? And why did you choose to write in a way that often feels more like a memoir than a novel?

It wasn’t an intentional choice to write it in a way that blurred the lines between memoir and novel. I know that might not sound believable given what the novel is, but the only way I could get into the intricacies of this friendship group was to embody someone who was once there, and who was also forced to reflect on what being there was like. The memoir-feel comes from Billie’s voice, I think. But that wasn’t the difficult part of writing it. I’m a deeply nostalgic person and I live so much of my life in the past so embodying an act of remembering on page was actually the simple bit. It was everything else that was tricky!

Where did your characters come from? Who do you relate to most? And who would you most like to have as your friend?

They come from nowhere and everywhere! I like to build characters from the small things they do up to their big character-defining actions. I’m a thief from life, so it might be that a friend of mine plays with their hair the way Ted does, or scrunches up their nose like Dave, but it doesn’t mean that those characters are in any way based on those friends. I’ve just borrowed idiosyncrasies from them the same way I’d borrow a pencil. And sometimes the quirks of these characters come from complete strangers. I was sitting in a café once and I saw a man playing with his ring finger the way Eleanor does, like he was flicking an invisible cigarette. And I have no idea who that man was or if he actually was a smoker or what – but I never forgot the way his hands looked. In terms of who I relate to the most, it probably is Billie. Apart from the fact that I’ve lived in most of the places she has lived, we aren’t that similar on paper, but I think we love in similar ways, and we have similar fears. I was racking my brain because what I really want is to be in this friendship group. I think one character I really love who actually has less of a starring role because she doesn’t move with the group to London is Dave. I just think this lanky, laddish girl with the chipped front tooth is so endearing and I’d love to talk to her about Byron’s sexuality.

What is next for Fiona Wilkes?

I’m a superstitious writer so I never reveal what my next project is until it’s done! Let’s just say that what is next for me is a lot more writing, and I’m excited to see where that takes me.

I Remember Everything is available now from all good bookstores and online.

The post ‘Queer folk have always been here’: Fiona Wilkes on connecting with a lost generation appeared first on Fremantle Press.

Noongar Boodja Waangkan and the Noongar First Words series by Jayden Boundry, a proud Wadjuk, Balardong, Yued, Wilman Noongar and Badimaya Yamatji man, and Tyrown Waigana, a Wardandi Noongar and Ait Koedhal multidisciplinary artist, are featured in an exhibition of illustrations and audio pronunciations.

From 27 May to 13 July, visit Raine Square and connect with the history, culture and strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through a diverse lineup of events led by celebrated First Nations creatives.

View the full lineup of events and exhibitions on the Raine Square website: https://www.rainesquare.com.au/discover/events/event-details/2026/05/27/default-calendar/maar-koodjal

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Fiona and Howard will chat about their new books, their writing and research process, and their shared experience of being shortlisted for the prestigious 2024 Hungerford Award.

This unmissable talk takes place on Monday 22 June from 6.00–8.00 pm at Subiaco Library. It’s free to attend, but please register on the Subiaco Library Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/author-talk-with-fiona-wilkes-and-howard-mckenzie-murray-tickets-1989276021129

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Beach Buddies comes with free teaching notes, perfect for Year Levels F–2, with Australian curriculum outcomes in English, Visual Arts (Colours), Biological Sciences and Numeracy. Download the teaching notes here.

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