An innovative publisher dedicated to discovering and nurturing new literary talent, Ultimo Press delivers compelling fiction and non-fiction works that challenge, entertain, and resonate with a contemporary audience.
Shankari Chandran was raised in Canberra, Australia. She spent a decade in London, working as a lawyer in the social justice field. She eventually returned home to Australia, where she now lives with her husband and four children.
Diana Reid is the Australian author of the bestselling novels Love & Virtue and Seeing Other People. Her debut, Love & Virtue, won the ABIA Book of the Year Award, the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award, the ABA Booksellers’ Choice Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the MUD Literary Prize. She was also named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist in 2022.
Iain Ryan grew up in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. He has written numerous crime novels, and his work has been published by Akashic Books Online, Crime Factory, Kill Your Darlings and Seizure. He has been shortlisted twice for a Ned Kelly…
Katherine Brabon is the award-winning author of the novels The Memory Artist, The Shut Ins and Body Friend. Her work has received the Vogel’s Literary Award, a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the David Harold Tribe Fiction Award. Her third novel, Body Friend, was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the ALS Gold Medal.
Published in English in Australia, the UK and the US, and in the translation in more than a dozen territories, Sulari Gentill is the author of The Hero Trilogy and the multi-award-winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, ten historical crime novels (thus far) chronicling the life and adventures of her 1930s Australian gentleman artist. The first book in this series was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the second won the Davitt Award. The remaining books have been variously shortlisted for the Davitt Award, the Ned Kelly Award, and the Australian Book Industry Association Awards.
Ashley Kalagian Blunt writes to expose the myriad ways our technology makes us vulnerable. She is the number-one bestselling author of Dark Mode, a psychological thriller published in multiple territories and languages. Dark Mode was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction, and was voted number 20 in the Better Reading Top 100.
Adrian Hyland is the award-winning author of Diamond Dove, Gunshot Road and Kinglake-350, which was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for non-fiction in 2012. His books have been published internationally, including in Britain and t…
Joanna Horton was born in the US, grew up in New Zealand, and now lives in Brisbane. She has an MA from the University of Chicago and a PhD from the University of Queensland. Catching the Light is her second novel—her first, Between You and Me, was p…
Yumna Kassab is a writer from Western Sydney. She studied medical science and neuroscience at university. Her first book of short stories, The House of Youssef, has been listed for prizes including the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, Queensland L…
Pip Finkemeyer is a novelist living in Naarm/Melbourne. Her debut Sad Girl Novel was published in 2023. You can find her writing in Harper’s Bazaar, Kill Your Darlings, Big Issue, Eleven Stories: The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, Mojo Best of Fiction Anthology, and more.
Madison Griffiths is a writer, artist and producer based in Melbourne. She is the co-producer of Tender, an award-winning Broadwave podcast that follows what happens in the aftermath of abusive relationships. Her essays have been published widely in…
Michelle Brasier is a multiple award-winning actor, singer, writer and comedian whose sold-out shows have won standing ovations across Australia and UK. On the small screen, Michelle has been featured on Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe, Stories From Oz, Th…
Aoife Clifford is the author All These Perfect Strangers which was long-listed for both the Australian Industry General Fiction Book of the Year and the Voss Literary Prize, and Second Sight, a Publishers Weekly (starred review) and PW Pick for Book…
As a phone-addict who came of age in the attention-economy, I’m painfully aware that novels demand an archaic amount of focus. Readers have to give you hours and hours of their life, undivided—you can’t read a novel flicking between tabs, or looking from your phone to the page and back every few seconds
My children are the second generation born and raised outside of our ancestral homeland. At times, the words ‘our ancestral homeland’ feel as though they belong to someone else – that I am not entitled to that expression
I was in my early 20s when my partner Rob died suddenly and unexpectedly. As I grappled with the loss, I was told to be grateful for the time we had together
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, about the highly relatable journey of becoming the 18th-century German poet Novalis. Every Penelope Fitzgerald book has a sublime quality that comes out of nowhere, and for me this one is the best, with the added poignancy of the best historical fiction: our knowledge that everyone and their problems are dead
I am a chatty bookseller. I love to talk to customers about their choices, what they have been reading and introduce them to a new favourite book and sometimes they introduce me to a book that becomes a favourite of mine
I am heavily pregnant, seven and a half months, with my first child sitting in a bathtub. The tub is in a tiny, rented cottage in the hills above Florence in Italy
My need to get a sense of the physical landscape my characters have lived in and walked on is both a joy and affliction. In the case of my latest novel, This Devastating Fever my focus on the natural surroundings of my characters almost derailed the novel
I never meant to be a teacher. I, in fact, categorically 100% in no absolute way wanted to teach
My name is Shankari Nadanachandran, and I am a lawyer, a writer, and a mother of four. I am 47 years old
Tap one. Tap two
Writing a crime novel is always great fun but creating a funny crime novel is a real challenge. Killing is the easy part, making a reader laugh about it is much harder
Music is essential to my writing process, sending me to another world, away from this one, and casting me into the moment with the characters. If I listen to, for example, ‘The Great White Open’ by Christian Löffler and Federico Albanese, or Dirty Three’s ‘Sue’s Last Ride’, I can start the process, like swimming towards the bottom of a pool and reaching a different place
