Fremantle Press have re-released Brendan Ritchie’s duology, Carousel and Beyond Carousel with brand-new stunning covers. Now available at all good bookshops.
“… rereleased for the post-pandemic reader and poses some big questions about how we cope with social isolation, lockdown, change and adversity.”
Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA)
Friday, May 17, 2:00 – 3:15
Temperatures soaring, natural disasters increasing, sea levels rising, coral reefs dying, the Arctic melting and forests burning. What kind of a future do we have to look forward to and how will the next generation face these challenges? Join host Bianca Breen (YA for WA), students from Margaret River Senior High School, and authors Graham Akhurst and Brendan Ritchie to discuss the very real threat of the climate crisis and how young people see their future.
Saturday 18 May 2024 – 9.30am – 11.30am
Busselton Library
2022 Dorothy Hewett Award winner Brendan Ritchie explores how writers can engage with place and the ideas, characters, and stories that can emerge as a result. Attendees will explore their own unique relationships with place and initiate writing that responds to these locations. This is a workshop focused on discovery and inspiration that may just uncover that long-lost novel waiting to surface.
Hosted by Brendan Ritchie
FREE, registration required
Proudly supported by Regional Arts WA
The cover design for Brendan Ritchie’s novel, Eta Draconis, has been shortlisted in the 72nd Australian Book Design Awards 2024.
Eta Draconis’ cover was designed by Josh Durham, known as Design by Committee, a graphic designer from Naarm/Melbourne. It’s well deserved, Josh — congratulations!
The winners of the Australian Book Design Awards will be announced on May 24th, 2024, at Craft & Co in Melbourne. More information about the awards and the full shortlist can be found on their website.
The Children’s Book Council of Australia has announced its 2024 Book of the Year Awards Notables List and Eta Draconis can be found on their Older Readers Notables List – “entries in this category may be fiction, drama or poetry and should be appropriate in style and content for readers in their secondary years of schooling. Ages 13-18 years.”
In what reads as an allegory for COVID, the lyrical, introspective style of this novel depicts a half-formed moorlessness that will speak deeply to young people whose lives changed so drastically in 2020. Anchored with a strong sense of place, the atmospheric tone is bleak, but ultimately offers a hopeful note. Elora’s character rings rawly true; at times, she’s thoughtful and reflective, and in the next moment, achingly young and unworldly. This is a very literary story but with a character-driven focus that appeals, with coming-of-age themes that quite literally showcase a young person’s changing reliance from family to the wider world. The actions of the characters are believable and authentic – people respond in strange ways in a crisis, and a slow apocalypse, one in which you literally have no control over anything but how you choose to live your life, would bring out the extremes of these behaviours
CBCA
Teaching notes for Eta Draconis are now free to download from UWA Publishing.
Teaching notes for Brendan Ritchie’s novel Eta Draconis are now available for free download from UWA Publishing. These teaching notes have been prepared by Melinda Tognini for UWA Publishing and are freely available to assist teachers in the classroom.
Please click here to download.
If you have any queries or are a school looking to purchase a class set please contact UWA Publishing via email admin-uwap@uwa.edu.au or via phone 08 6488 3670.
Brendan Ritchie has woven a gripping tale around this journey made by two young women in a time of change and uncertainty.
Dr Ann Skea, The Newtown Review of Books
Eta Draconis has been reviewed by Dr Ann Skea for The Newtown Review of Books. The Newton Review of Books is an independent site for book reviews covering a wide range of genres.
J.R. Burgmann has reviewed Brendan Ritchie’s Eta Draconis and Roanna McClelland’s The Comforting Weight of Water for the Australian Book Review as both novels “in different ways [..] attend to the central question: how does one come of age in a collapsing world?”
Much like the late Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Ritchie’s rhythmic text is punctuated quite precisely by affecting flashbacks that reveal the developing rift between Elora and Vivienne.
J.R. Burgmann, Australian Book Review
“Join Laurie Steed, Michael Trant and Brendan Ritchie for an author event at the Busselton Library on Monday 4th September.
Laurie Steed is a prize-winning novelist and short story writer from Perth, well-known for his novel You Belong Here which was shortlisted for the 2018 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.
Michael Trant is a WA country boy turned suburban writer, whose novels Wild Dogs and No Trace depict the quintessential “outback noir” that Australia’s vast landscape is so perfectly set up for.
Brendan Ritchie is a local South West writer who was the winner of the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award, and is the author of new book Eta Draconis.
Busselton Dymocks will have copies of the writers books for sale, with cash and eftpos available.
The Busselton Library will provide drinks and light refreshments on arrival.
Like all Busselton & Dunsborough Libraries events, it is free, however bookings are required.”
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