UWA Publishing has acquired world rights to Georgie Harriss’s literary novel Perpetual Stew which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award.
Perpetual Stew is a grotty yet lyrical work of queer autofiction with a touch of surrealist Australiana thrown in. Told from the perspective of a 19-year-old Georgie, the novel interweaves narrative fragments about living with their ninety-four-year-old grandmother and apart from their terminally ill father, developing an eating disorder and losing their best friend to an exotic meat enthusiast, elating in their first queer romance and enduring various breaches of bodily autonomy. Through a playful reinvention of lived experience, this disgusting/delicious soup of a book explores the conflicted nature of embodied existence in 21st Century ‘Australia.’
Georgie Harriss says: “I’m delighted that Perpetual Stew has found its home with UWA Publishing. This autofictional novel playfully repurposes my own life to illuminate the intricate webs of embodied experience that entangle us with others. My prose aches, edges, and asks unanswerable questions about queer pleasure, intergenerational pain, and the unsettling coagulations of white-settler identity within Melbourne’s young left middle class. It’s a huge privilege to be working with UWAP to bring this disgustingly delicious soup of book into the world.”
Kate Pickard, publisher of UWA Publishing, says: “When I first read Georgie’s manuscript for the Dorothy Hewett Award I was charmed by its savagely observant and charmingly transgressive nature. We think this will be a great read for those who enjoyed My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and The Pulling by Adele Dumont.”
Georgie Harriss is a non-binary creative writer, theatre-maker and academic based in Naarm. They hold a PhD in creative writing from Monash University through which they developed queer and pleasure-centred frameworks for rescripting lived experiences of trauma. They’ve been the recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship, an ATYP National Mentorship and a City of Melbourne writer’s residency. Their debut play Love Bird was staged at both The Butterfly Club and La Mama; the script was published by In Case of Emergency Press in 2022. They currently lecture in screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Perpetual Stew will be published by UWA Publishing in February 2027.
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