UQP acquires Lucashenko novel ‘Too Much Lip’

UQP acting-CEO and publisher Madonna Duffy has acquired world rights to Melissa Lucashenko’s new novel Too Much Lip.

Partly inspired by Ned Kelly and the Beverley Hillbillies, Too Much Lip ‘looks at modern Aboriginal life in the bush and addresses intergenerational trauma in an honest and hopeful way.’

Lucashenko won an $80,000 Copyright Agency Cultural Fund Author Fellowship to work on the manuscript in November, and UQP plans to release the finished book in 2018.

Duffy told Books+Publishing she is delighted to sign the new novel in progress. ‘Too Much Lip is a novel of dissent and social commentary, written with Melissa’s razor-sharp wit and fearless eye. Just like Mullumbimby before it, it will be a game changer for Australian Indigenous writing and will be the novel to read in 2018.’

Lucashenko said she is ‘very happy to continue [her] long association with UQP’, which stretches back 20 years. ‘[UQP] have been at the forefront of indigenous writing for decades and have put in the quite considerable legwork to understand this space more than any other mainstream house,’ said Lucashenko. ‘I trust UQP to get what I’m doing a black writer and of course as a Queensland author I am thrilled to be able to remain with our local legends despite offers from elsewhere.’

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions