UQP acquires Adelaide’s autofiction novel
The University of Queensland Press (UQP) has acquired world rights to When I Am Sixty-Four, an autofiction title by Debra Adelaide, via Jane Novak Literary Agency.
When I Am Sixty-Four holds Adelaide’s reflections on ‘the final days of a friend and fellow writer’ Gabrielle Carey – Adelaide’s friend since childhood, said the publisher, ‘Based on [their friendship], When I Am Sixty-Four explores universal themes of inherited trauma and grief; friendship, loyalty and ageing; and the tensions between motherhood and creativity.’
Living and writing on Bidjigal Country in Sydney’s inner west, Adelaide is an author, editor and adjunct associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney. Her work Zebra (Picador) won the 2019 Steele Rudd Award for short fiction in the Queensland Literary Awards, and her novels have been short- and longlisted for several literary awards, including the international Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for fiction) and the Nita B. Kibble Award.
Adelaide said, ‘Like every work of fiction I have written, When I Am Sixty-Four is an attempt to answer a question or solve a problem. However, in this case that problem was not clear to me until I reached the end of the first draft, when something struck me clearly: my friend who is the subject of this novella spent her writing career interrogating her complex life and the many forces that shaped it.
‘She would have been compelled to write about this final traumatic period of her life. So I realised that I was doing what she could not, confronting issues like the creative writing life, the influence of reading, the slippery nature of memory, and the endless ripples of unresolved grief. I didn’t write this book intending it to be a tribute or for therapy, but I can see now that it is both, as well as offering narrative possibilities for those elements in my friend’s life that ultimately determined her fate.’
UQP publisher Aviva Tuffield said, ‘This work of autofiction, based on the close friendship between two women, now in their sixties, who are both writers and have known each other since high school, is nothing less than mesmerising. Episodic, reflective and profound, When I Am Sixty-Four weaves in and out of their shared experiences and musings, their professional and personal trials and tribulations, while also grappling with the dark shadow of suicide and depression. I was incredibly moved by this book and I know so many readers are going to be too.’
UQP plans to release When I Am Sixty-Four in April 2026.
Photo credit: Gregory Ferris.
Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions
