Melissa Lucashenko

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Melissa Lucashenko's teenage novel, Too Flash,
by Jukurrpa Books is available in bookshops now.

Melissa Lucashenko is an Australian writer of mixed European and Murri (Aboriginal) heritage. She was born in Brisbane in 1967, and attended public primary and secondary schools there. After working as a barmaid, delivery driver and karate instructor, Melissa received an honours degree in public policy from Griffith University, graduating in 1990.

Melissa has since lived in other Australian states as well as the Kingdom of Tonga. She bases herself at Billinudgel, which is one and a half hours south of Brisbane, near Byron Bay.

Melissa's first novel of urban Aboriginal Australia, Steam Pigs, was published by the University of Queensland Press in 1997 to critical acclaim. A story of racial identity and working class life, Steam Pigs won the Dobbie Prize for Australian women's fiction, was shortlisted in the NSW Premier's Awards, and was shortlisted for the regional Commonwealth Writer's Prize.

Melissa's second novel, Killing Darcy, was written for teenagers, and won the Aurora Prize of the Royal Blind Society. Her third novel, Hard Yards, concerns the aftermath of a death in custody. It was shortlisted for the Courier-Mail Book of the Year in 2001, as well as the NSW Premier's Award. Too Flash, a teenage novel about class and friendship, was released by IAD Press, Alice Springs, in late 2002.

"We live in a period in which the conservation of anything is disparaged..the conservation of books, the conservation of darkness, the conservation of ideas...it all gets very short shrift in contemporary society..."

Barry Lopez, US writer

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