A Letter from the Publisher

Well, hello! 

Where did the year go? I’m slightly askance that we are in November, which means I have now been at MUP for ten months, having taken over from Nathan Hollier in January – a lifetime ago. I want to thank everyone who has been in touch for their warm welcome, and also acknowledge the magnificent MUP team, who have had to embed a new publisher and produce the titles that make up our stellar 2024 list. 

As the University of Melbourne’s in-house press, MUP amplifies the University’s commitment to evidence-based knowledge and provides a vital platform for sharing its work with the world. MUP authors present the best peer-reviewed research and thinking in the country as idea, analysis, argument, rhetoric, memory, conscience and, most of all, knowledge. MUP books are not content. 

MUP books stand for the enduring importance of scholarship – these are the books that help us think and make sense of the world we live in. Fran Lebowitz’s ‘Think before you speak. Read before you think’ has never been more apt than in today’s clamorous, shouty world.

As purveyors of copyright in the age of artificial intelligence, we are ever more aware that knowledge provenance and credibility have never mattered more. So it is especially gratifying when a scrupulously researched book like Andrew Fowler’s Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty is justly recognised at the 2024 Walkleys for its razor-sharp analysis, and for putting on the record the deep ramifications of policy breakdown and public misinformation. 

Thanks are due to the MUP class of 2024 authors for entrusting us with their work, and for continuing in the tradition of writing books that explain Australians to ourselves and to the world. This year, MUP authors took us inside the Australian Defence Force, followed the fortunes of the Matildas and dissected the Eurasian power shift.  

They crafted books on the lives of women who left their families for a strictly enclosed order of nuns, on the battle for the heart and soul of what became the modern AFL and on a David-and-Goliath battle to control the world’s money markets.  

As a university press sited on the lands of the Boon Wurrung, Woiwurrung and Wurundjeri, we are fortunate to learn from and walk with our Indigenous colleagues, who generously share their knowledge with us in Dhoombak Goobgoowana and Indigenous Knowledge: Australian Perspectives. Look out for more Miegunyah Indigenous titles in 2025, a list that will feature work by Wayne Atkinson, Marcia Langton, John Moriarty and more. 

Other MUP authors looked at decolonisation through different lenses: through the question of Aboriginal art and copyright, narratives of colonial discovery and by making an impassioned case for non-Western ways of creating sustainable relationships with the environment in which we live.  

One of the great privileges of publishing at MUP is making books for the Miegunyah imprint. We are proud to present two artistic titans: Nolan’s Africa by Andrew Turley shows Nolan’s prescience in his examination of species extinction and human conflict. Our other illustrated title is Patrick McCaughey’s judiciously edited Diaries of Fred Williams: intimate, insightful, generous, and a rare glimpse into an artist’s creative process.  

Our list this year also includes many works of great literary power. My Brother Jaz, a masterpiece of conception and execution, took Gideon Haigh 37 years to get to writing; we are so pleased that so many readers have already taken this book to their hearts.  

Meanjin editor Esther Anatolitis has pulled together a stylish provocation of a book in Essays that Changed Australia, and for a masterclass of legal dissection nonpareil, there is Justice Michael Lee’s judgment on the Lehrmann defamation case. 

Mark Raphael Baker’s A Season of Death – a book about love in all its guises and how it illuminates, enraptures, heals – completes Mark’s trilogy of works that began nearly three decades ago with his singular Fiftieth Gate. This posthumous work was completed by Mark’s wife Michelle Lesh and his stepfather-in-law Raimond Gaita, whose paperback edition of Justice and Hope features a new essay on Gaza and a foreword by Maria Tumarkin. 

As Australia readies itself for a 2025 election, two MUP titles can help you get a handle on how we got here and how to chart a course forward. A Better Australia, on policies that have made present-day Australia, spanning gun reform to the NDIS, superannuation, gender, the environment and more, makes the case for policy innovation through bipartisanship and consensus. An Unlikely Survival traces the evolution of welfare government by government over the last 75 years, and asks if we are indeed ready to enable a fairer Australia. 

We are well into making our 2025 books, and excited about bringing you exceptional reading on subjects as diverse as the enduring grandeur of the Gallipoli myth, Australian fathering, Antarctica and more. For more gems on this year’s list and to keep up with our publications, please drop by our website. While there, do look up our other prize-winning titles and bookmark events to keep up with your favourite authors’ appearances. 

Few gifts are better than books – I would say that! – so for the upcoming festive season, we hope you’ll support your local bookshop. 

Finally, from all of us at MUP, have a safe and restful summer break when you get there, and very happy reading to you. See you on the flipside.