News & Events

Julia's latest book, The Push, will be out in June. This is the cover: what do you think?

Julia says, The Push was a group of libertarian thinkers who hung around the pubs (and racecourses) of Sydney from the 1950s until the 1970s. The people were interesting to me because they believed that 'freedom in love is the condition of other freedoms' and 'the desire for security and sufficiency is the very mark of the servile mentality' at a time when Australian society was extremely conservative, and the idea of striving for freedom was viewed with deep suspicion by the mainstream.

‘The young men and women who were involved in The Push seriously tried to live out their ideals; they didn't always succeed, and looking back it's easy to see some of their blind spots. I wanted to see what would happen if you put two restless young women under The Push's tantalizing influence: that's really the story of the novel.'

Julia will be at the Children's Book Council conference in Melbourne in May, talking about sex and death, or something like that. She will also be appearing with Maureen McCarthy, Sue Lawson and J.C. Burke for the Centre for Youth Literature on the intriguing topic ‘It's different for girls.'

Julia is also very excited to be traveling to the Sunshine Coast for the first time ever for the legendary Voices on the Coast at the beginning of June.

She will be joining some of her favourite YA writers and talking to Queensland kids between 2 and 7 June. Apparently it will still be raining then.