Sreedhevi Iyer and Jamie Marina Lau

In partnership with the Emerging Writers’ Festival, we’re presenting two writers whose exceptional debut books were published in 2018.

Jamie Marina Lau is a writer and musician. Her first novel, Pink Mountain on Locust Island, won the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature Readings Residency Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize. It’s an innovative work of fiction, about the intersecting online and offline worlds of a young woman who lives with her dad in a claustrophobic Chinatown apartment. The novel has been described by one reviewer as a ‘surreal, electronic parable’.  

In Sreedhevi Iyer’s short story collection, Jungle Without Water, the Melbourne-based writer delves into themes of displacement, prejudice and Australian suburban mores with great wit and originality. (One magic realist story is even told from the perspective of a ‘divine’ coconut.)

Both writers have bright futures ahead. Sreedhevi Iyer’s second novel, The Tiniest House of All Time, will be released in September 2019 with Wild Dingo Press, while Brow Books have recently signed two more novels by Jamie Marina Lau, with the first, Gunk Baby, to be published in 2020.

Ahead of the event you can prepare by reading a short story, ‘The Lovely Village’, from Jungle Without Water  by Sreedhevi Iyer (courtesy Gazebo Books) and an extract from Pink Mountain on Locust Island  by Jamie Marina Lau (courtesy Brow Books). 

Join the pair for a chat about literary experiments, daring debuts and the path to publication. Hosted by Sumudu Samarawickrama.

Presented in partnership with the Emerging Writers’ Festival.

Readings will be our bookseller for this event.

This event will be live-streamed – sign up for reminders below.