“Is a friendship that ends necessarily more significant than the ones that endure? Endings have more drama – the sudden upheavals of volcanoes and earthquakes, but perhaps the slow changes of lasting friendships – the elegant carving of wind and water – alter us more deeply.”

Friendships are among the most important relationships in our lives, often outlasting love affairs, marriages, even, at times, family connections. The loss of a friendship can be one of life’s most disturbing events, yet these “friend break-ups” are little acknowledged in our culture.

In True Friends, acclaimed author Patti Miller recounts the joyful making and then painful ending of a long, close friendship. It is a deep and influential relationship in her life, but when it inexplicably unravels, Patti is left searching for answers. As she tries to make sense of this ending, Patti considers other important friendships through her life and reflects on one of the first friendships of literary history in the epic of Gilgamesh. Questioning who we are drawn to, what we really know of each other, why some friendship endure and others end, she takes us close to the nature of human connection.

Evocative and intimate, this powerful book brings together the personal and the universal and reminds us of the centrality of friendships in our lives and why they should be celebrated.

They didn’t know it, but  Patti Miller and her brother shared something in common –a passion for the illuminating joy of wild nature –with all its challenges and dangers. In this extraordinary and unexpected book, Patti tells the story of her own long-distance walking over hundreds of kilometres in Europe and of her brother’s obsession with paragliding.

As adult, a tragic accident changes their relationship. One day, Barney’s wing collapses and he plummets to earth, breaking his spine. The story of his struggle to walk again intersects Patti’s long-distance journeys, creating an intense narrative of determination and triumph.

This beautiful and inspiring book tells their story and reveals that they share a longing for wild beauty – and a willingness to take risks to find it. With rare insight and poetic writing, The Joy of High Places combines physical adventure with a powerful emotional journey.

Writing True Stories is the essential book for anyone who has ever wanted to write a memoir or explore the wider territory of creative nonfiction. It provides practical guidance and inspiration on a vast array of writing topics, including how to access memories, find a narrative voice, build a vivid world on the page, create structure, use research-and face the difficulties of truth-telling.

This book introduces and develops key writing skills, and then challenges more experienced writers to extend their knowledge and practice of the genre into literary nonfiction, true crime, biography, the personal essay, and travel and sojourn writing. Whether you want to write your own autobiography, investigate a wide-ranging political issue or bring to life an intriguing history, this book will be your guide.

Writing True Stories is practical and easy to use as well as an encouraging and insightful companion on the writing journey. Written in a warm, clear and engaging style, it will get you started on the story you want to write-and keep you going until you reach the end.

‘A rich, practical and accessible source of wisdom … the complete tool kit.’ Caroline Baum

‘Patti is the writing whisperer! She taught me how to stop daydreaming and to get writing. I couldn’t have written my memoir without her!’ Jessica Rowe.

What does it mean to fulfil a dream long after it seems possible? When Patti Miller arrives to write in Paris for a year, the world glows ‘as if the light that comes after the sun has set hadspilled gold on everything’.

But wasn’t that just romantic illusion? Miller grew up on Wiradjuri land in country Australia where her heart and soul belonged. What did she think she would find in Paris that she couldn’t find at home? How could she belong in this city made of other people’s stories?

She turns to French writers, Montaigne, Rousseau, de Beauvoir and other memoirists, each one intent on knowing the self through gazing into the ‘looking glass’ of the great world. They accompany her as she wanders the streets of Paris – they even have coffee together – and talk about love, suffering, desire, motherhood, memory, the writing journey – and the joys and responsibilities of ransacking..

Exploring truth and illusion, self-knowledge and identity, and family and cultures, Miller evokes the beauty, the contradictions and the daily life of contemporary Paris.

For 40,000 years the Central NSW area of Wellington was Aboriginal – Wiradjuri – land. Following the arrival of white men, it became a penal settlement, mission station, gold-mining town and farming centre with a history of white comfort and black marginalisation. In the late 20th century, it was also the subject of the first post-Mabo Native Title claim, bringing new hope – and new controversy – to the area and its people.

Wiradjuri land is also where author Patti Miller was born and, mid-life, it begins to exert a compelling emotional pull, demanding her return. Post-children, having lived a dream life in Paris, it is hard for her to understand, or ignore, and so she is drawn into the story at the heart of Australian identity – who are we in relation to our beloved but stolen country?

Wellington and the Wiradjuri people are the main characters – and in revealing their complex narratives, Patti uncovers her own. Are her connections to this place through her convict forefathers, or through another, secret history? She sets out on a journey of exploration and takes us with her. Black and white politics, the processes of colonisation, family mythologies, generational conflict and the power of place are evoked as Patti weaves a story that is very personal and, at the same time, a universal story of country and belonging.

The Mind of a Thief is about identity, history, place and belonging and, perhaps most of all, about how we create ourselves through our stories.

We all have a story to tell – whether it is a story of a migrant childhood, a difficult past, adopting a child, riding a bike across India, or simply a contemplative year in a garden. With these stories we make sense of ourselves and the world around us.

Memoir – writing about an aspect of a life rather than a whole life – expresses and shapes these stories within us so that the writing becomes more than a record, it becomes a creative journey.

Drawing on Patti’s extensive teaching and writing experience, and using examples and exercises, The Memoir Book provides invaluable insight on how to find your topic, develop narrative voice, find a balance between factual truth and vivid story-telling, explore creative ways of structuring memories, and helps identify the best form for your writing – whether it be literary memoir, narrative non-fiction, sojourn and travel writing, or even the personal essay.

Written in Patti’s warm, clear and conversational style, this book is an essential guide for anyone who wants to write memoir or extend the possibilities of autobiography and non-fiction. The Memoir Book, a companion volume to her highly successful guide Writing Your Life, provides inspiration and practical advice for both new and experienced writers exploring the popular genre of memoir.

After spending seven years caring for nine-year-old Theo, whose mother died when he was a toddler, Patti is devastated when his father decides to start a new life with his son in Melbourne. Patti needs a distraction, she decides to give singing lessons a go. But, if anything, the lessons make her feel worse.

Corrie and Michael’s twenty-year-old son, Tom, goes to Asia after dropping out of university – no-one hears from him and he does not return on the due date. His parents are left to contemplate the nightmarish possibilities. Corrie, haunted by her own unremembered past, waits, while Michael travels through Asia looking for their son.

At home, Corrie begins to write Tom’s life from conception to adulthood. Once upon a time when everything was as it should be. She tries to fathom the mysterious unknowability of her own son and soon realises she is writing a spell, trying to call him back into her world. In the process, she creates an intensely sensuous and emotional exploration of motherhood – its pleasures, failures, irritations, griefs and joys. She is confronted by the illusion of control and by the random mystery of things, the chance of it all, and desperately hopes chance will deliver her child back to her.

‘In a moment I know that life in stories will always be more convincing, more perfect, than actual life. It could not be otherwise. Life is unfinished and must always dissatisfy. It may be infinite in its wonder and despair, but its nature is rough because it is always in the making. Memory and story-telling perfect living.’ Creating stories from her own experience, Patti Miller tells real and fictional narratives about her great-aunts, weaving imaginary tales about actual lives, and exlporing the possibilities in the silence under the stream of stories. The Last One Who Remembers traverses the boundaries of fiction, personal history and essay. Miller explores the stories which shape our lives; shifting from the overheard murmurings of family, through tales of childhood landscape and religion, to fantasies of sex and the illusory certainties of intellectual knowledge. She looks at how these stories create our sense of self and form our picture of the world. Patti Miller is the author of Writing Your Life, and has been teaching writing classes in the Blue Mountains and Sydney for many years.

If you have dreamed by childhood creeks, had coffee with a friend, watched the sun rise after a partner has died, or lived through any of life’s twists and turns, then you have a life story to write.

Writing Your Life provides techniques for getting started, handling perspective, finding your voice and bringing experiences to life on the page. It also explores issues like selective memory, emotional healing and how to communicate your truths without clich s.

Expanded and revised throughout including three new chapters, Writing Your Life also illustrates the passion and delight of life writing with the addition of a wholly new anthology of stories by people who have already been encouraged by Patti Miller’s writing techniques.

This wonderful new edition of Writing Your Life will inspire and guide you through the exciting journey of exploring your own life story.

‘This book will be a valuable companion as you write your own life story.’ Caroline Jones, author of An Authentic Life

‘Patti Miller is the perfect navigator to accompany anyone embarking on the journey of discovery that is life writing . her voice is like that of a guiding friend, offering encouragement and support as well as practical advice.’ Caroline Baum

UQP celebrates 70 years of publishing the best Australian writing with a unique anthology that showcases the diversity of the Australian literary landscape.

Featuring 25 of the greatest Australian writing names from UQP’s past and present, this unique publishing project will showcase specially commissioned fiction, non-fiction and poetry by Australia’s finest writers on themes such as legacy, country, vision and hope.

Nikki Gemmell, Kate Holden, Liane Moriarty, and many other women writers present funny, quirky, and revealing stories about surviving their teen years

Remember your high school formal, your first love, first kiss, first bra, and the first time you realized your parents weren’t always right? Relive the joys (and the horror) of adolescence with 50 inspiring and accomplished writers, as they reveal how they survived those challenging years. Whether they’re writing about adolescent angst, first crushes, being a rock groupie, battles with anorexia, or deciding to become a nun, these women prove that while the teenage years are not necessarily the best, you can survive to tell the tale. The result is a wonderfully funny, moving collection of memories told with honesty, insight, sensitivity, and humor. No two experiences are the same, because while some girls don’t have a care in the world, real or imagined, some girls do.