How Richard Newsome’s writing experiment turned into a three-book deal
When award-winning author Richard Newsome tried his hand at a writing experiment, he never expected it would turn into a three-book deal – but perhaps the bigger surprise was the way that his new character, Stella McNaught, took on a life of her own.
What Lee Kofman learnt while researching body imperfections
In Imperfect, Lee Kofman explores what it’s like to live in a body that deviates from the norm. Here, she shares some of the lessons learnt while researching and writing her fascinating new book.
Bad Yogi by Alice Williams: addiction therapy for the cynical
Bad Yogi traces the two years I spent training to become a yoga teacher while seeking treatment for an eating disorder. We in the yoga community can get our heads stuck up our asanas sometimes and I wanted something that would acknowledge the pain, but also make me laugh.
Summer reading favourites
The summer break is the best time to get started on our ‘to read’ piles that have been collecting dust throughout the year. Here are some of our holiday favourites from other publishers.
Alison Lester Takes Home the Melbourne Award for Literature
We couldn’t be happier to share the news that Alison Lester has won the Melbourne Prize for Literature, one of Australia’s richest arts prizes
Affirm Press Partners with Sweatshop for New Mentorship for Western Sydney Authors
Affirm Press is delighted to join forces with the Western Sydney literacy movement Sweatshop to establish a mentorship which will enable two Western Sydney writers from culturally diverse backgrounds to develop their debut novels.
Kids Submissions Opening 1 November!
If you’ve been working on a manuscript for juniors, middle-readers or young adults then it’s time to start filling your plot-holes and sharpening your prose ...
Greg French’s bear tales
Greg French is best known as a master fly fisher, and he shares many of his wondrous fishing stories in his book Water Colour. But what many readers may not realise is that he has plenty of encounters with creatures much furrier, and bigger, than fish: bears. He shares here some incredible stories and photos from over the years.
Q&A with author and illustrator Gwyn Perkins
CBCA winner Gwyn Perkins recently answered some questions from a class of curious Year Two students and his sense of humour shines through so brightly that we wanted to share the Q&A here.
Lee Kofman on Dinner with the Dissidents by John Tesarsch
We recently celebrated the launch of John Tesarsch’s brilliant third novel, Dinner with the Dissidents, where Lee Kofman shared some of her insights into this literary thriller, set in the tumultuous times of 1970s Moscow.
Getting inked at Melbourne Writers Festival
In the spirit of the ‘Literary Tattoos’ session at Melbourne Writers Festival, where festival-goers can get inked with a book-related design, the Affirm Press team reveals what our own literary tattoos would be.
Christian White signs major Australian/American screen deal for The Nowhere Child
Australian production company Carver Films (Snowtown, Sunshine) has partnered with prestigious US-based production company Anonymous Content (True Detective, 13 Reasons Why, The Revenant, Babel, Spotlight) to win the screen rights to Christian White’s chart-topping thriller, The Nowhere Child.
Has there ever been a better time to be an Australian writer?
There’s something magical happening in Australian publishing.
A Walk in the Bush Wins CBCA Picture Book of the Year, The Very Noisy Baby Named Honour Book for Early Childhood.
A whimsical picture book inspired by the wilderness in NSW by debut author/illustrator, Gwyn Perkins, was the first ever book released on the Affirm Press kids list.
Three writers chosen for the Affirm Press Mentorship Award 2018
Two previous winners of the award have gone on to sign publishing deals with Affirm Press.
A Walk in the Bush and The Very Noisy Baby Shortlisted for the CBCA Awards
We’re rapt that two of our kids books have made the 2018 shortlist for the Children Book Council of Australia Awards (CBCA).
Dinuka Mckenzie Hatches ‘The Perfect Crime’
Flood Debris, was chosen as the best entry in the Affirm Press/Tablo ‘The Perfect Crime’ competition.
Talking less and listening more
Martin Hughes (with senior editor Ruby Ashby-Orr) explores what it means to shape a better culture and create safer workplaces.
THE NOWHERE CHILD Hits Bestseller List – Reprint on the way!
Affirm Press has hit reprint on another 10,000 copies of the highly anticipated thriller The Nowhere Child.
Affirm Press’ Varuna Mentorship Award Applications Open
This year application fees will be halved and a travel bursary provided for successful entrants with health care cards to make the award more accessible for low-income writers.
Paula Keogh on the Affirm Press/Varuna Mentorship
It was an intense and inspiring week. My first meeting with the editors became a three-hour discussion of my manuscript. I’d been working alone for years on my story; to talk about it with editors who had read my work deeply was my idea of heaven.
The Silver Sea raises $40,000 for Children’s Hospital
‘Profit-for-purpose books like this could be risky projects but, with the support of the booksellers, The Silver Sea has exceeded expectations ...'
Jane Godwin: Thinking About Colour
I have wanted to make a book about colour for young children for some time. As well as helping them make sense of the world, it’s a child’s first experience of the aesthetic, of art really, and of a visual, sensory, and emotional response.
Publishing, fast and slow: Martin on ‘slow’ media
Celebrate the ‘slow’ qualities of books—an ancient technology successfully withstanding the digital transformation of the world, created by devoted experts and curated by passionate people.
New partnership with Tablo to find the perfect crime.
This call-out is for fiction or narrative non-fiction around the theme, ‘The Perfect Crime’.
Bookseller in Spotlight: Michaelie Clark, Store Manager of Collins Warrnambool
I can’t go past our local literature. Victoria’s south-west is blessed with lots of literary talent.
The Books We Love From Other Publishers.
Here are a few of our holiday favourites.
Affirm Press to Work 26 January in Support of Changing the Date of Australia Day.
The Affirm Press team has unanimously voted to not observe the public holiday on 26 January in support of changing the Australia Day holiday to a more inclusive date for Australia's First Peoples.
Meet Nicole McKenzie
This year the Australian Publishers Association gave us a pretty fabulous gift through their Publishing Industry Internship Program.
We’re hiring
We're looking for a junior to mid-level publicist to join our team.
A Cricket Revolution
ABC journalist Michael Sexton has written a new book on what many consider to be the most underrated and thrilling chapter in Australian cricketing history.
VPLA Winner Christian White Goes Global
Christian White’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Award winning manuscript has been sold in nine more territories
A Different Way by Kerryn Phelps
We encourage you to read this and vote yes.
Love Ya Bookshop Day!
They curate. They choose the best from the rest. They make your life easier.
The 2017 Affirm Press Mentorship Award Winners Announced
The authors of the winning manuscripts will receive a week’s residency and manuscript development at Varuna, the National Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains.
Writing Through Pain: Sue Currie’s Journey From Difficult Patient to Published Author
Fiction classes helped me breathe life into the characters in my story without divulging too much of them personally. It also taught me how to set a scene using all my senses, even when it hurt emotionally to revisit certain memories or moments in my life.
The Birdman’s Wife Wins Australian Book Association’s Booksellers’ Choice Award.
Affirm Press’ bestselling 2016 novel The Birdman’s Wife by Melissa Ashley has won the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) Booksellers’ Choice Award.
Martin On the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Winner, Christian White
I read Melbourne author Christian White’s DECAY THEORY in a day, a night and a morning. I was absolutely enthralled; my family didn’t get a look-in. Christian writes with a kind of magic, and I was under his spell from the very first page.
Meet Our Younger Readers Senior Editor, Davina Bell.
It sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t realise until pretty late in life that books were made by people or that you could work as part of that world. But one of my earliest memories is reading The Pokey Little Puppy on my mum’s lap, squished into her brown 70s rocking chair, which we used to do a lot.
Top tips for becoming a wicked stepmum
If one in five Australian families are blended, then there must have been plenty of people like Kelly Chandler who fell in love and then ended up with an instant family.
The Birdman’s Wife shortlisted for the General Fiction Book of the Year – Australian Book Industry Awards
We did something a bit bold this year when we did our award entries for the ABIAs and decided not to enter the ‘Small Publisher’ award categories.
Martin on the joy of kids books
It’s especially satisfying because one of my girls was a reluctant and not-very-confident reader this time last year. Last night, and here’s the reason for my indulgent post, we had ‘a moment’.
Applications Open for the Affirm Press Mentorship Award
The aim of the Mentorship is to help writers get their manuscript to a publishable standard and, if the process is successful, for Affirm to publish the work.
An Italian Recipe for Repose
Repose. Tendrils of longing, right to the ends of my fingertips, straight to the depths of my heart. I had been craving it for years, and there it was, in a farmhouse in Italy.
Melissa Ashley on ABDA and the Superb Fairy Wren
It was my secret hope that Elizabeth Gould’s iconic lithograph of the superb fairy wren featured in the cover design for The Birdman’s Wife.
Living life as a poem: playing with ideas of poetry
People can’t live by poetry alone. But I know I couldn’t live without it.
Rebekah Clarkson remembers storybooks buried in her childhood consciousness
I would have forgotten all about The Little House were it not for Helen Garner’s short essay reflecting on her visceral and enduring memory of a childhood storybook, The Journey of the Stamp Animals.
Backflip from Affirm Press?
A couple of years ago Affirm Press publically made a stand in favour of Australia’s strong independent bookshop culture by not supplying paper versions of our titles to Amazon or the Book Depository.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Prose and Love My Inner Larrikin
I didn’t set out to write a larrikin. In fact I thought I was writing a serious book. But then Lachie Munro, the hero, or anti-hero of Something For Nothing emerged.
Meet Our New Assistant Editor, Coco McGrath
The plan was always to become an editor with a trade publisher (if you check my Grade 12 notebook it has ‘Book editor’ listed as #1 dream job, followed, for reasons I can no longer explain, by ‘Town Planner’).
Martin on his own (accidental) complicity in sexism in sport
Growing up, I never appreciated my privilege or paid it any mind to be honest.
Ten Things I Hate About Christmas
Affirm Press Sales & Marketing Director Keiran Rogers reflects back on Christmas 2016 and gives us the ten things he hates about Christmas
Martin on why it’s not as much fun if you’re only ever winning (except in golf)
What a year 2016 has been! And yet I’ve learned so little. Perhaps the lessons of the recent past will reveal themselves when I’m not panicking about the hundred things undone, the Christmas shopping unshopped, and the promised blog piece for Grace heretofore unwritten. It’s been a bumper year for Affirm Press and we’ve continued the huge expansion of recent years. Blahdy blah. But like every other publisher, we’re weighing up the what ifs – what if we’d recognised what the least successful ten books would be, and focused all our energy on the top ten instead? Why does it [...]
Diving Deep for Charity
On 7 January I will face my fear of water and swim the world's largest open water event: the Lorne Pier to Pub. I agreed to take on the challenge nearly 12 months ago as a way of raising funds for domestic violence.
What Makes a Good Bookshop?
There are a few things I look for when I visit a new bookshop.
The Times They Are A-Changin’ for the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature
Dylan’s lyrics have had a meaningful and lasting effect on countless people. Why shouldn’t song lyrics be considered a valid form of poetry?
Winners of the 2016 Affirm Press Mentorship Award Announced
The recipients will undertake a one-week residency at Varuna, situated in the inspiring Blue Mountains, and receive one-on-one editorial workshop with editors Ruby Ashby-Orr and Kate Goldsworthy.
Letter to My Teenage Self raises $20,000 for charity in two weeks
Letter to My Teenage Self is the passion project of teenager Grace Halphen who, after having a tough time transitioning between schools, set out to create a book that would help other teenagers feel reassured and less isolated when they went through tough times. The book features letters from 55 prominent Australians offering the advice they wish they’d heard when they were growing up.
Alecia Simmonds’ WILD MAN wins the Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for Non-fiction
Congratulations to Alecia Simmonds on winning the Davitt Award for Non-fiction at the Sisters in Crime gala dinner on Saturday 27 August for her debut book, Wild Man.
Greg French on THE LAST WILD TROUT and fishing for conservation
Greg French believes that fly fishers have discovered how to develop physical and spiritual connections with nature that are completely sustainable. ‘Trout are found in some of the most wild, romantic and scenically diverse habitats on Earth, and fly fishers the world over share a unique camaraderie, something universally profound and sincere.
Q&A with Brewed with Balls creator Steph
I first pitched the idea having seen an article about Dock Street Brewery’s ‘Ain’t Nothing to Funk With’ – a golden saison barrel-aged with the music of Wu Tang Clan. Being a beer and a hip-hop lover I had to investigate, and I realised there are heaps of weird and wacky beers out there but no books dedicated to them. So the idea was born, and Martin and Keiran were foolish cool enough to give me a go at it!
Q & A with Kate James
What I care about most is living a purposeful life. For me this means being true to myself, even if the choices I make don’t necessarily look impressive to the outside world.
Q&A with Sunny Leunig
Sometimes it's actually liberating to know that you aren't the best. It might help us concentrate on achieving things that we are more capable of. I'm not saying people should give up, however sometimes I think some people just shouldn't begin in the first place.
If a Book Was a Beer, What Would It Taste Like?
Affirm Press is crafting its very own ‘book beer’ and we'd love suggestions from publishing folk on what ingredients we should include.
Interview with Happy Mama, Amy Taylor-Kabbaz
We’ve all heard the safety warning on planes before takeoff to always apply your own oxygen mask before attending to your loved ones - the idea being that without your own air, you can’t help anyone else. Well, it’s the same for parenting.
Affirm Press signs one of the inaugural winners of our Varuna Mentorship Award: 2016 applications open
Affirm Press is pleased to announce that we have acquired the rights to publish Paula Keogh’s memoir The Green Bell. In October 2015 Paula received manuscript development from our editors, Ruby Ashby-Orr and Kate Goldsworthy, as part of the Affirm Press Mentorship Award at Varuna House.
Internships: the value of practical experience
When it comes to the publishing industry, internships are a fact of life...
Affirm Press in April
Nearly three years ago, we restructured and committed ourselves wholeheartedly to publishing and we’ve been expanding ever since. We’re officially the fastest growing publisher in Australia, but we pride ourselves more on being the most positive publisher in Australia (through a combination of dynamism, idealism and, frankly, naivety).
Tim Rogers’ reaction to The Book of Uninspiring Quotes
‘I used to wake in the morning and put my pants on one leg at a time with hope and belief. Now I lay around pantless with belief only in home deliveries and twist top bottles. Damn you Leunig. My hope has drained away.’ – Tim Rogers (You Am I)
Where have the big guys and the multi-nationals gone?
Yes, yes it’s that guy from Affirm Press again banging his drum again about small and Aussie publishers...