A/ProfDebra Adelaide

Associate Professor Debra Adelaide is the author or editor of 17 books, including novels, nonfiction, and reference works. She joined the permanent Creative Writing staff of UTS in 2003 after many years as a freelance writer, researcher, editor, book reviewer, and as a casual teacher.

Her first novel was The Hotel Albatross, published in 1995 and republished in 2009. Her other books include edited collections, such as A Bright and Fiery Troop (on Australian women writers, published by Penguin, 1988); the popular Motherlove series (published by Random House, 1996, 1997, 1998); and Acts of Dog (Random House, 2003). Her novel The Household Guide to Dying was published to critical acclaim in Australia in 2008 and was published in many other countries including the UK, the USA, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, China and Brazil. Her collection of short fiction, Letter to George Clooney (Picador 2013) was long- and short-listed for several literary awards. A collection of essays she edited in collaboration with and for the Sydney Story Factory, The Simple Act of Reading (Vintage) was published in May 2015 while her novel The Women's Pages (Picador) was also published in 2015. Her recent collection of short fiction is Zebra (Picador 2019) which won the Steele Rudd Award for short fiction in the Queensland Literary Awards. Her latest book is The Innocent Reader: reflections on reading and writing (Picador 2019).

She has been a judge of a number of literary awards including the Vogel/Australian award for younger writers, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the Nita B. Kibble Awards for women writers, and the Patrick White Award. She is currently Fiction Editor for the literary journal, Southerly.

Her current projects include a new novel, and a co-edited book on creative writing practice.