Giramondo Publishing
The Giramondo Publishing Company is an independent, Australian, university-based literary publisher of award-winning poetry, fiction and non-fiction, renowned for the quality of its writing, editing and book design.
Giramondo celebrates 30 years of publishing in 2026. Our story began with HEAT literary magazine in 1996, and its founding commitment to publishing innovative Australian and international writers of the highest standard. We sought to bring adventurous work to readers, that might not otherwise find publication because of its subtle commercial appeal; to stimulate exchange in the Australian literary ecosystem and its counterparts overseas; and to build a common ground between the academy and the marketplace. We brought these same principles to our book publishing program, which began in 2002.
Giramondo’s titles have won or been shortlisted for all the major Australian literary prizes, including the Miles Franklin, the Patrick White Literary Award, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Stella Prize, the National Biography Award and the various state Premier’s Awards. Our prize-winning authors include Alexis Wright, Gerald Murnane, Brian Castro, Judith Beveridge, Antigone Kefala, Beverley Farmer, Jessica Au, Hasib Hourani, Evelyn Juers, Lucy Dougan, Alan Wearne, Kate Middleton, Yumna Kassab, Lisa Gorton, Robert Gray, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Michael Farrell, Fiona Wright, Ali Cobby Eckermann, π.o. and many more.
Giramondo is also committed to publishing literary works from overseas in translation, including writers from Latin America, China, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. Our Australian translators include Tiffany Tsao, Chris Andrews, Alice Whitmore and Elizabeth Bryer.
In 2020, Giramondo Publishing launched The Novel Prize in collaboration with international publishers Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and New Directions (US). The prize is a biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers around the world. It has since been won by Jessica Au, Anne de Marcken, Jonathan Buckley and Giada Scodellaro. In 2025, the three publishers launched The Poetry in Translation Prize, a biennial award for an outstanding poetry collection translated into English, open to living poets from around the world, writing in any language other than English.
For almost 25 years since our company was founded, all of our titles were designed by the award-winning Australian designer Harry Williamson. This tradition of excellence was subsequently taken up by Jenny Grigg in 2020. In 2025, Allison Colpoys also began working with Giramondo on our prose book cover designs.
For the past twenty years the Giramondo Publishing Company has been sponsored by Western Sydney University, where it publishes from the Writing and Society Research Centre, with offices in Parramatta City. Giramondo is a recipient of funding from Creative Australia, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body, and the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
