The Australian

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. Recently married to a woman he barely knows and struggling to forge a relationship with his newborn son, the Australian returns to his home city to tend to his dying mother and unlock the mystery surrounding his estranged, deceased father. His journey leads him to the Dreaming Tracks sacred landmarks across Australia to sites inspired by his father s Australian Outdoor Geographic magazines, and beyond.

A poignant and at times satirical meditation on masculinity, fatherhood, isolation, New York City, fame, and loss, The Australian examines the way we come to know each other, and ultimately ourselves.

"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." Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special

"Emma Smith-Stevens' The Australian is a picaresque for the twenty-first century beguiling, funny, and inventive, intermittently sad and always beautiful." David Leavitt, author of The Two Hotel Francforts

"Emma Smith-Stevens unmans the titular Australian in The Australian with a quiet, wise, sure-footed humor that is seductive." Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood

Emma Smith-Stevens is the author of a novel, The Australian, and a short story collection, Greyhounds, both forthcoming from Dzanc Books. She has been employed as a server at a pancake house in Delray Beach, FL, a gift-wrapper in Boca Raton, a personal assistant in Los Angeles, a scriptwriter for virtual patients used by nursing students, and an instructor at the University of Florida and Santa Fe College. She currently teaches creative writing for the Bard Prison Initiative. Originally from New York City, she lives in Hudson, NY with her husband Sebastian and their two dogs.

Her writing has appeared in Subtropics, Conjunctions, SmokeLong Quarterly, Joyland, Day One, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, The Hairpin, and elsewhere. Her short story "An August in the Early 2000's," published in Wigleaf, received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XL: Best of the Small Presses (2016), and her work was selected for inclusion in Wigleaf 's Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions in 2013 and 2012. Her essay, "The Sun," will be included in the anthology Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture (Eds. Roxane Gay and Ashley C. Ford), forthcoming from Harper Perennial. She is a graduate of Bard College and the University of Florida's MFA program in creative writing.