We publish books that matter — narrative and literary nonfiction on important topics, and the best of local, international, and translated fiction.

Scribe is pleased to announce the upcoming publication of West Girls, an eviscerating new novel by Laura Elizabeth Woollett, author of The Newcomer, Beautiful Revolutionary, and The Love of a Bad Man.

Featuring an intersecting cast of glamour-hungry public schoolgirls, WAGs, mining heiresses, backpacker-barmaids, and cosmetic nurses, West Girls examines beauty, race, class divisions, and social mobility in Australia’s richest state. It’s also a devastating catalogue of the myriad, inventive ways in which women love and hurt one another.

‘It took two years of closed borders to make Western Australia, and my family situation, seem worth writing about. West Girls is more personal than my earlier books, but it also elaborates on themes I've been circling for a long time — power, desire, internalised misogyny, who gets to move up in the world and who gets hurt along the way,’ says Laura of the writing process and the book.

Acquiring publisher Marika Webb-Pullman comments about the book that, ‘Laura is one of our most interesting and talented writers, and I'm thrilled to be working with her again. West Girls continues her exploration of complex, flawed women living within the patriarchy, and of female friendship in all its glory and its toxicity. As with her previous books, though, she approaches these topics from unexpected angles, and her work remains dazzlingly unpredictable.’

West Girls will be published on 1 August 2023.