Author: Bram Presser

Home > Articles posted by Bram Presser (Page 2)

25 Oct

Posted at 01:42h in News

Having a ball on this wild American ride, and to finish it off I'll be going back to my punk DIY roots for a double header pop-up book launch with MaNishtana, thanks to the excellent people at Hevria. Come down to Luminescence - 268 Brooklyn Ave, Crown Heights, Brooklyn - this Sunday (Oct 28)  at 7pm and celebrate the launch of The Book of Dirt and the brilliantly titled Ariel Samson: Freelance Rabbi. It's free, it's got the awesome Matthue Roth doing his magical thing and it's going to be totally great. ...

07 Oct

Posted at 16:16h in Uncategorised

My short run of American starts tomorrow with the awesome Franklin Park Reading Series. Come down and hear me along with Ben Marcus, RO Kwon, Samantha Hunt, Dan Sheehan and Amanda Stern. For full schedule head to forthcoming events....

16 Sep

Posted at 09:13h in News

Exciting arrival in the mail! I finally got my hands on the Chinese edition of The Book of Dirt. I loved the cover when I first saw it on email, but I wasn't prepared for how beautiful the book itself would be. Thanks so much to my Chinese publishers Kuwei for the love they clearly put in to producing and publishing my book. I hope to make it to China some day soon! In other awesome news, The Book of Dirt has just been long listed for The Voss Prize alongside some of Australia's heaviest literary hitters. Big congrats to all the long listees. It's an absolute honour to be there amongst them!...

31 Aug

Posted at 12:20h in News

In a totally unexpected and exciting turn of events, The Book of Dirt was long listed for the Waverley Library Award for Literature. Fondly known as The Nib, the award was established in 2002 to recognise the role of research in fiction and non-fiction. You can read the full list and get more information about the Nib here....

08 Aug

Posted at 03:35h in News

I'm absolutely thrilled to reveal the Chinese cover for The Book of Dirt, which will be published soon by the lovely people at Kuwei Publishing. ...

11 Jun

Posted at 12:37h in News

Well, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards kicked off one heck of month, with May stuffed full of amazing events. At Sydney Writers Festival, I had a blast on two panels: And The Winner Is...

01 May

Posted at 06:03h in News

I'm so thrilled to announce that The Book of Dirt has won three prizes at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. In what was a fantastic event and a thrilling night, the novel picked up The Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, The UTS Glenda Adams Award for Best New Writing and The People's Choice Award. You can check it all out in The Sydney Morning Herald, The ABC and The Australian. A massive congratulations to all the other shortlisted authors and winners, especially the magnificent Kim Scott for his extraordinary novel, Taboo, that took out two prizes including Book of the Year. ...

20 Mar

Posted at 02:46h in News

Absolutely thrilled to let you know that The Book of Dirt has been shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. And what an honour it is to be sitting alongside incredibly distinguished writers I love and admire. The full shortlist is: Common People by Tony Birch (University of Queensland Press) Seabirds Crying in the Harbour Dark by Catherine Cole (UWA Publishing) Pulse Points: Stories by Jennifer Down (Text Publishing) The Book of Dirt by Bram Presser (Text Publishing) The Restorer by Michael Sala (Text Publishing) Taboo by Kim Scott (Picador) You can read the NSWPLA press release here and see the judge's full citation for The Book of Dirt here. The shortlisting rounds out a couple of fantastic weeks, with great events at Dymocks Camberwell Book Club and The Wheeler Centre. Yours truly with Jodi McAlister and Heather Morris at the Dymocks Camberwell Book Club. The Wheeler Centre Next Big Thing (Imagined Biographies) with Marija Peričić, Kelly Gardiner, some random guy, Joey Bui and Stella Charls....

05 Feb

Posted at 23:39h in News

Apologies for the radio silence - I've been in my usual summer hibernation mode for the past month and a half. Lots to tell, though! The Wheeler Centre just released their new program and I'm excited to be part of The Next Big Thing event on March 19. Come along to hear Marija Pericic, Kelly Gardiner and I chat with Stella Charls about the strange ways fact and fiction collide in our writing. Check out the details and book your free tickets here! The Australian Book Review ran a feature where publishers picked their favourite books of 2017 that weren't published by them, and I was humbled to see Barry Scott from Transit Lounge choose The Book of Dirt. Transit Lounge publish so many books and authors that I admire, so it was a real thrill to round out a great year. Check out the feature here. I also did a great fun interview with Jennifer Wong on ABC Radio National's new arts show, The Hub. For once I wasn't crapping on about my book, but about a book I love and collect obsessively (I have 18 different editions). Put it in your ears here! Another thoughtful (and rather wonderful) review came courtesy of...

19 Dec

Posted at 11:01h in Dig Deeper

In its initial incarnation, The Book of Dirt was to be presented as a "found manuscript". The structure would take the form of Talmudic pages, with a central narrative and surrounding commentaries. I'll be posting a sample page soon, but in the meantime, here's the original prologue. It's kind of embarrassing and overdone in parts, and it's pretty long, but hey, it's also kind of fun. So here goes: A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER ON THE SECOND EDITION OF PRESSER’S “THE BOOK OF DIRT” I first discovered The Book of Dirt while on holiday in the Czech Republic. A colleague had given me a list of her favourite Prague bookstores, literary oases far removed from the throng of tourists that infest the more popular historical sites, and told me that I was to visit any one of them whenever I needed an escape. There are many things to love about these stores, she said, not the least of which is the vast selection of novels by Czech authors that are published by small independent houses and that never find their way to the outside world. She then joked about the tax deductibility of the trip should I happen to acquire one of...