UPCOMING BIGHT PRESS TITLES Fiction Picnic at Hanging Rock: a Graphic Novel Bikers & Australia Pioneer Stock Non-Fiction A History of Aboriginal Art Spaces in Melbourne Gold Rush Celebs Bricks & Mortars: Stories of Anti-war Street Protest in Australia
BightPress New Releases
BIGHT PRESS BESTSELLERS
August 2018 Bight Press is an independent publisher based in Melbourne. We publish titles covering the breadth, diversity and individuality of the Australian experience. Our titles range from memoir to fiction, children’s books to anthology: all of them addressing the ongoing conversation about who Australians are, and where they’re going. Bight Press is based in Melbourne and acknowledges the traditional owners past and present of the Wurundjeri land on which we operate.
Twelve Australian writers walk into a milk bar
Dogs and cars, an enduring symbol of fun and freedom
A fist fight over sherbet bombs, first kisses behind the bike shed, fairy-bread made with olive oil and the political knifing of a Little Aths oligarch.
Dogs and cars and the open road. Who hasn’t laughed at the pure excitement of a dog enjoying a ride in a car?
Darkly funny, bursting with life and sometimes uncomfortably relatable, Buffalo Bill & Fried Dim Sims is a collection of short fiction from some of Australia’s best writers who survived the 90s. Stories from Benjamin Law, Alice Pung, Jennifer Down, Josh Thomas and more explore growing up, fitting in and coming out.
Photographer Nat Mathiesen spent a year travelling Australia, focusing on this most enduring image of fun and freedom. From dogs in utes in hot northern cane fields, to salty beach dogs and dogs touring Sydney’s inner-city, to sportscars and the stylish dogs who travel in them, this book is wry, heart-warming and joyful. DOGS IN CARS
Mathiesen captures pure fourlegged exhilaration, fun and tailwagging excitement in a series of stunning images that are a funny and beautiful essay on total dog joy and living in the moment.
Nat Mathiesen ISBN: 9780834329681 RRP: $29.99 Format: 246 x 304mm Hardcover, 96pp
BUFFALO BILL & FRIED DIM SIMS
Benjamin Law, Alice Pung, Jennifer Down, Josh Thomas, Rachel Lews, Sam Gordon, Nicholas Bremner, Til Catanach, T.L. Din, Jerry Bruck, Lane Geimer, Sara James Short Story Anthology/Fiction ISBN: 9781863994887 RRP: AU$29.99 Format: 234 x 153mm Paperback, 220pp
AUTHOR BIO
Nat Mathiesen is a photographer, travel journalist and keen surfer. When she’s not on the road, home is a small farm on the New South Wales South Coast shared with her partner and two dogs.
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DRUGS AND GERANIUMS E.M. FLINT ISBN: 978583274715 RRP: AU$29.95 Format: 305 x 241mm Paperback, 200 pp b&w
The Melbourne florist selling more than just flowers
An endearing tale of a misunderstood arachnid
The bright lights emitted a faint green glow from the corner of the dark street in Carlton. Who desperately needed a bouquet at 3am? This 24-hour florist in Melbourne’s inner north had confused locals for a long time. How could a flower shop offer a 24-hour service and manage to stay afloat all these years? People would often joke, ‘Zenelli’s is probably just a drug front.’ That dark humor morphed into strange reality when the police raided the shop in July 2018. Amongst the carnations and plump roses, leather ferns and poms, illicit drugs like ice, ecstasy and marijuana made their new home in Australia. Owner and violent drug dealer, Khaled Moustafa, dragged a kidnap victim back to the shop, leading police straight to his stash of drugs among the flowers.
Amadeus is pretty uncomfortable to look at and a bitter character in all forms; a sore loser of life he would say. He is also a huntsman spider. The Lone Huntsman follows his journey after a near death experience and how he navigates the world thereafter. The charming and witty world of Amadeus is touching and believable. It is a clever look through the many eyes of a widely feared species and our common desire to love and be loved. It might make you look differently at our eight-legged companions. THE LONE HUNTSMAN Elke Flint ISBN: 9783161484100 RRP: AU$24.95 Format: 153 x 110mm Paperback, 230 pp b&w
AUTHOR BIO Spiders get a bad wrap and in Australia, there are more than 2,400 species. Growing up in Queensland, Elke is no stranger to the eight-legged creepy crawlies that occupied her home as a child but instead of living in fear, she found an odd appreciation for this ill-loved species.
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What happens when only you can save the world?
The real stories of real family, generations in food
Joe thought he’d escaped Them. Had hidden himself too well to be found. He had a safe job and the right set of friends, a tidy life. But it’s all gone wrong. Now he’s got a crazy dedication to photographing every piece of graffiti that hits the walls of his suburb. Graffiti Joe was born the day that Pearl came back into his life—Pearl with her demon connections and her stories about the world coming to an end. Again.
Majinder hopes to leave his Woolgoolga banana farm to one of his three daughters to run once they’re married. He’d prefer to return to the push and shove of his father’s business – the wholesale fruit racket.
So Joe keeps taking his photographs, because sooner or later, that graffiti’s going to tell him just how he can stop the Apocalypse. Because Pearl won’t. She never does. GRAFFITI, AN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY
Started by Majnder’s great uncle a hundred years ago, the Coff’s Harbour business has survived three relocations, an attempted coup in the 1970s by disgruntled second cousin, a drought every decade, and an attempt from his mother to arrange a marriage that would have seen him living with his wife’s family in Punjab. Ying Hou stretches dumpling skins with the deft, elegant movements of a concert pianist. Her mother Meiyan Wang half shouts, half sings at her as they work to fold, pinch and pleat hundreds of fish-stuffed parcels before opening. Bourke Street isn’t so far away from her mother’s home on the Shandong Peninsula.
FRUIT BARONS & DUMPLING DAMES: AUSTRALIAN FOOD DYNASTIES Sally Huang ISBN: 9781863959887 RRP: AU$27.99 Format: 208 x 153mm Paperback, 260pp
Lucy Frankenheimer ISBN: 9770634529941 RRP: $19.99 Format: 210 x 135mm Paperback, 324pp
Fruit Barons & Dumpling Dames takes the reader inside the family drama, the hidden history, and the larger than life personalities behind Australia’s food dynasties. From the Sikh families who once had a monopoly on NSW fruit transport in the 1920s, to the mother-daughter duo behind Melbourne’s ShanDong Mama – these are the families who shape the way we eat.
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
Sally Huang is a writer, TV producer and food obsessive working and eating in Melbourne. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The Age, SBS online, The New York Times and Good Food. She was a producer on The Family Law and Australian Story, and now turns her keen eye for true stories to her favourite topic - food, and the people behind it.
Lucy Frankenheimer has a black belt in Judo, has lived in Paris and Berlin and now lives in Melbourne, where she works as a translator. Graffiti, an Australian History is her third novel.
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