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  • First Nations Classic Series

    First Nations Classics Series Banner
  • The inspiration for UQP’s First Nations Classics series, launched in 2023, lies in the richness and cultural importance of First Nations writing on this continent and in the longstanding role UQP has had in publishing those works. For almost four decades, UQP has been the beneficiary of the many incredible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers who have entrusted us with their words and their stories. The series honours the legacies of prominent First Nations authors by relaunching them as new editions with introductions by leading contemporary Indigenous voices. With this First Nations Classics series we aim to bring new readers and renewed attention to some brilliant, timeless books – across all genres – that are as important, engaging and relevant today as they ever were on first publication.

    - Yasmin Smith, UQP Series Editor for the First Nations Classics and Special Projects Editor

  • Samuel Wagan Watson in Conversation with Ellen van Neerven

    Samuel Wagan Watson in conversation with Ellen van Neerven at the UQ Art Museum, 19 September 2024.

    To celebrate the publication of UQP's First Nations Classics series, the event was supported by UQP, AustLit, the UQ Art Museum, and the School of Communication and Arts.

  • Finding Eliza: Power and Colonial Storytelling, Larissa Behrendt

    image of person or book cover
    Cover image courtesy of publisher.

    'A vital Aboriginal perspective on colonial storytelling

    'Indigenous lawyer and writer Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the local Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island in 1836. In this deeply personal book, Behrendt uses Eliza’s tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonizers’ stories.

    (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Dreaming in the Urban Areas, Lisa Bellear

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of UQP

    'These poems are anything but motionless. Their emotions cut, determined to map out another possibility, a place of personal and social reconciliation.' (Source: Back cover)

    (...more)
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  • Bitin' Back, Vivienne Cleven

    Image courtesy of UQP
    'When the Blackout's star player Nevil Dooley wakes one morning to don a frock and 'eyeshada', his mother's idle days at the bingo hall are gone forever. Mystified and clueless, single parent Mavis takes bush-cunning and fast footwork to unravel the mystery behind this sudden change of face... Hilarity prevails while desperation builds in the race to save Nevil from the savage consequences of discovery in a town where a career in footy is a young black man's only escape. Neither pig shoots, bust-ups at the Two Dogs, bare-knuckle sessions in the shed or even a police siege can slow the countdown on this human time bomb. (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Mazin Grace, Dylan Coleman

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of publisher's website.
    'Growing up on the Mission isn't easy for clever Grace Oldman. When her classmates tease her for not having a father, she doesn't know what to say. Pappa Neddy says her dad is the Lord God in Heaven, but that doesn't help when the Mission kids call her a bastard. As Grace slowly pieces together clues that might lead to answers, she struggles to find a place in a community that rejects her for reasons she doesn't understand.'
    Source: Publisher's website
    (...more)
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  • Is That You, Ruthie?, Ruth Hegarty

    Image courtesy of UQP
    'It that you...? Matron's voice would ring out across the dormitory. In that pause sixty little girls would stop in their tracks, waiting to hear who was in trouble. All too often the name called out would be that of the high spirited dormitory girl Ruthie. In the depression years Queensland's notorious Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission became home to four-year old Ruth until her late teens when she was sent out to serve as a domestic on a station homestead.' (Source: University of Queensland Press website) (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Me, Antman & Fleabag, Gayle Kennedy

    Image courtesy of UQP

    'A collection of short stories that encapsulates the story of the Aboriginal narrator, her partner Antman, their dog Fleabag and their life in travelling in rural Australia.'  (Source: Narragunnawali resource)

    (...more)
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  • Smoke Encrypted Whispers, Samuel Wagan Watson

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    This image has been sourced from Web

    'These poems pulse with the language and images of a mangrove-lined river city, the beckoning highway, the just-glimpsed muse, the tug of childhood and restless ancestors. For the first time Samuel Wagan Watson's poetry has been collected into this stunning volume, which includes a final section of all new work.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

    (...more)
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  • Plains of Promise, Alexis Wright

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of UQP

    'In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grandmother's suffering.

    (...more)
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  • Blood, Tony Birch

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    'Jesse has sworn to protect his sister, Rachel, no matter what. It's a promise that cannot be broken. A promise made in blood. But, when it comes down to life or death, how can he find the courage to keep it? Set on the back roads of Australia, Blood is a boy's odyssey through a broken-down adult world.' (Source: Publisher website)

    (...more)
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  • Holocaust Island, Graeme Dixon

    Image courtesy of UQP
    'Graeme Dixon's ballads speak out on contemporary and controversial issues, from Black deaths in custody to the struggles of single mothers. Contrasted with these are poems of spirited humour and sharp satire. In Holocaust Island a powerful new voice emerges from a history of displacement.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) (...more)
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  • Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, Nugi Garimara

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    This image has been sourced from online.

    'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth.

    (...more)
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  • Don't Take Your Love to Town, Ruby Langford Ginibi

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    'Don’t Take Your Love to Town is a story of courage in the face of poverty and tragedy. Ruby recounts losing her mother when she was six, growing up in a mission in northern New South Wales and leaving home when she was fifteen. She lived in tin huts and tents in the bush and picked up work on the land while raising nine children virtually single-handedly. Later she struggled to make ends meet in the Koori areas of Sydney. Ruby is an amazing woman whose sense of humour has endured through all the hardships she has experienced.

    (...more)
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  • Purple Threads, Jeanine Leane

    image of person or book cover
    Cover image courtesy of QUP
    ' Purple Threads is a humorous collection of rural yarns by a gifted storyteller. Jeanine Leane grew up on a sheep farm near Gundagai, and the stories are based on her childhood experiences in a house full of fiercely independent women. In between Aunty Boo's surveillance of the local farmers' sheep dip alliance and Aunty Bubby's fireside tales of the Punic Wars, the women offer sage advice to their nieces on growing up as Indigenous girls in a white country town.

    The cast of strong Aboriginal women in a rural setting gives a fascinating insight into both Aboriginal and rural life.
    (...more)
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  • Heat and Light, Ellen Van Neerven

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    'In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real.'

    'Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In ‘Heat’, we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ‘Water’, a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ‘Light’, familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging.

    (...more)
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  • The Window Seat, Archie Weller

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    Cover image courtesy of publisher.

    'Since Archie Weller was runner-up for the first Vogel Award in 1980 for his novel The Day of the Dog, he has become an important voice in contemporary Indigenous writing. The Window Seat is a collection of his best short fiction and a tribute to his contribution to Australian literature.

    'These stories are honest, brutal and moving. In 'The Window Seat', we witness an old woman's journey home through the eyes of an disgruntled white traveller who sits beside her; in 'Stolen Car', a young Aboriginal man learns his first lesson in rough justice, and in 'Dead Dingo', we see another rallying against what his friends, life and fate are offering him.

    (...more)
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  • Unbranded, Herb Wharton

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of UQP

    'From the riotous picnic races to the famous Mt Isa rodeo, from childhood in the yumba to gutsy outback pubs, Unbranded presents a strikingly original vision of Australia. With a rollicking cast of stockmen, shearers, barmaids and tourists, this novel is the story of three men. Sandy is a white man; Bindi, a Murri; Mulga is related on his mother's side to Bindi, and on his Irish father's side to Sandy. Their saga . and enduring friendship . covers forty years in the mulga country of the far west.

    (...more)
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