University of Queensland Press

University of Queensland Press

Parent company	University of Queensland
Founded	1948
Country of origin	Australia
Headquarters location	Brisbane, Queensland
Key people	Ben James, Director
Publication types	Books
No. of employees	19
Official website	www.uqp.com.au

University of Queensland Press (UQP) is an Australian publishing house based in Brisbane, Queensland.

Founded in 1948 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Queensland and a traditional university press, UQP now publishes books for general readers across fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children’s and YA. As of 2024, UQP is Queensland’s only major publishing house with domestic and international distribution.

In 2021, UQP was awarded Small Publisher of the Year by the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs).

History

Established as a publisher of scholarly works, UQP made its transition into trade publishing in the late-1960s, largely through poetry and the Paperback Poets series .

Considered revolutionary at the time, Paperback Poets was a series of poetry editions in paperback format and priced at $1. The series was established after now acclaimed poet and novelist David Malouf expressed a desire to produce a new poetry format that was affordable and had mass appeal. Alongside Malouf’s debut collection Bicycle and Other Poems, the Paperback Poets series published volumes by writers such as Rodney Hall and Michael Dransfield, who would go on to become icons of Australian poetry.

Today, UQP has a reputation for fostering writing talent across all genres and has launched the careers of some of Australia’s most highly respected and acclaimed authors, from Peter Carey, winner of the Booker Prize, Janette Turner Hospital and Thea Astley to Melissa Lucashenko, Tony Birch and Sarah Holland-Batt.

In 2023, UQP created the First Nations Classics series, a collection of UQP’s award-winning titles by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers reissued with introductions from contemporary authors. The series set out to celebrate the legacy of Indigenous Australian writing in the publisher’s backlist and bring renewed attention to the featured titles.

Preceding this series, UQP was the first mainstream Australian publisher to set up a list specifically for Indigenous authors in 1990 with the Black Australian Writers series.

In 2021, UQP became a signatory to the United Nations' (UN) Sustainable Development Goals Publishers Compact and, in 2023, was the first Australian trade publisher to be climate neutral or positive.

Awards

Since 2019, UQP authors have won significant national acclaim, with award wins in all of Australia’s most prestigious literature prizes including the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Stella Prize, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Voss Literary Prize, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the Queensland Literary Awards, the Children's Book Council of Australia Awards, the ACT Book of the Year, the ARA Historical Novel Prize, and more.

In 2020, UQP's The Trespassers by Meg Mundell was selected by the UNESCO Cities of Literature as one of seven initial books that reflect the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals .

UQP established the David Unaipon Award for an Emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Writer in 1988 in honour of Ngarrindjeri author, inventor and activist David Unaipon, and it remains the most prestigious national award for unpublished Indigenous authors today. The award established the careers of hailed Australian writers such as Doris Pilkington Garimara, Samuel Wagan Watson, Larissa Behrendt, Tara June Winch and Ellen van Neerven.

UQP established the UQP Quentin Bryce Award in 2020 in honour of Dame Quentin Bryce to recognise a book in its list each year that celebrates women’s lives and/or promotes gender equality. The inaugural recipient of the award was van Neerven’s poetry collection Throat, which went on to be recognised in multiple prizes, including winning Book of the Year at the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

In partnership with Arts Queensland, UQP supports the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Established in 2003 and named in honour of the distinguished Queensland poet Thomas Shapcott, the prestigious prize discovers and celebrates emerging Queensland poets and offers them a publishing contract with UQP. Previous winners of the prize include celebrated poets Holland-Batt, Felicity Plunkett, Gavin Yuan Gao and Rae White.

UQP also supports the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer Queensland Literary Award. The award was established in 1999 with the aim to mentor Queensland writers in the early stages of their careers. The winner receives a publishing contract with UQP.

See also

• List of university presses

External links

• UQP website
• UQP Instagram
• UQP LinkedIn