After 14 years of shaping a list as publisher at UWA Publishing, I am delighted to announce I am launching my own imprint, Upswell, in 2021.
The principles I used to build a list of books that speak to each other across a set of intellectual interests and how they worked language and revered it remain. My intention is to publish a small number of distinctive books each year in, broadly, the areas of narrative nonfiction, fiction and poetry. I am interested in books that elude easy categorising and work somewhat against the grain of current trends. They are books that may have trouble finding a home in the contemporary Australian publishing sector.
From my beginnings as a bookseller in my 20s, I’ve thought about books that last, in a cultural sense, for 20 to 50 years or more, whether they remain in print or not: books that have been noticed and noted for their originality. I have been delighted with the many shortlisting in major awards for the last books I published at UWAP, and am thrilled and hugely enthusiastic about this new venture and the opportunity to continue to make books of substance.