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Author Description Emma Smith-Stevens is the author of a novel, The Australian, and a story collection, Greyhounds, coming in 2026. Her writing has appeared in the NYT bestselling and Lambda award-winning anthology Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture (Ed. Roxane Gay), Against Death: 35 Essays On Living (Ed. Elee Kraljii Gardiner), Kindle Singles, and elsewhere.<br /><br />THE AUSTRALIAN<br />A young man known as "the Australian" journeys between New York and Melbourne on a quest of self-discovery in this poignant exploration of loneliness, love, and fatherhood.<br /><br />In her humorous and emotionally resonant debut, Emma Smith-Stevens follows the exploits and evolution of a young man—known only as the Australian—over the course of a dozen years, from his time in Melbourne, posing as Superman for tourist photos, to his life in New York, where he spends years unemployed before stumbling into fame and fortune.<br /><br />Married to a woman he barely knows and struggling to forge a relationship with his young son, the Australian returns to his home city to tend to his dying mother and unlock the mysteries surrounding his estranged, deceased father. His journey leads him to the Dreaming Tracks—sacred landmarks across Australia—sites inspired by his father's Australian Outdoor Geographic magazines, and beyond.<br /><br />A poignant and at times satirical meditation on masculinity, fatherhood, New York City, fame, and loss, The Australian examines the ways we come to know each other, and ultimately ourselves.<br /><br />PRAISE<br />"There are some writers--and Emma Smith-Stevens happens to be one--who seem effortlessly able to fill the page with life. This chronicle of an extraordinarily ordinary seeker is all wit and wonder, so tolerant of human fallibility, so respectful of mystery and complexity, so disinclined to demarcate the heroic from the foolish. I admire this debut for its style and stance."<br />-Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special<br /><br />It's startling to finish The Australian and remember that this is a first novel: it's so wry, clever, swift, and assured that the reader senses immediately that she's in skilled and sympathetic hands. What a seductive voice; what a smart and charming book! And, most of all, what a wonderful new writer we have in Emma Smith-Stevens. <br />-Lauren Groff, NYT bestselling author of The Vaster Wilds<br /><br />"The Australian is a picaresque for the twenty-first century beguiling, funny, and inventive, intermittently sad and always beautiful." <br />-David Leavitt, author of Shelter In Place. <br /><br />The Australian is so deftly written, the exact right mixture of heartfelt and ridiculous, that I cannot count the number of times that a line in the novel absolutely floored me. Emma Smith-Stevens lets absurdity do what it does best: to render the complexity of the world in such stark relief that it transforms you. This is a brilliant, beautiful debut—a contemporary Stoner or Speedboat."<br />-Kevin Wilson, NYT bestselling author of Now Is Not the Time To Panic<br /><br />"Emma Smith-Stevens unmans the titular Australian in The Australian with a quiet, wise, sure-footed humor that is seductive." <br />-Padgett Powell, author of Indigo<br /><br />"Emma Smith-Stevens writes with such a brilliant sense of language and humor, with such intelligent mystery and disarming intimacy, that the reader is compelled to follow the Australian on his absurd and moving journey through a baffling world, always wondering what could possibly happen next, until the title character ultimately reaches a kind of transcendence. The Australian is an audacious debut novel."<br />-Michael Kimball, author of Big Ray<br /><br />"The Australian is a sui generis mutation of the coming of age story which, like its protagonist, defies any easy categorization. Fueled by Emma Smith-Stevens's trenchant eye, rollicking humor, and ceaselessly churning imagination, the book sweeps us along, bearing us into topographies that feel at once recognizable and remote, equipped only with a compass set in defamiliarize mode. The Australian himself c

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