My Brilliant Career

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879-1954) was born in Old Talbingo, Australia. Despite a difficult and isolated childhood — she grew up in the impoverished bush regions of New South Wales, with limited education she completed her first book at the age of just nineteen. The ironically titled My Brilliant Career (1901) was published under a male pseudonym, to immediate success and acclaim. Its story of an impassioned, ambitious heroine frustrated by rural bush life resonated with young Australian women and established Franklin as a bold new feminist voice in literature. Following the publication of her debut novel, Franklin moved to Sydney, then on to America and Britain. She wrote and published a total of nineteen books across her lifetime, as well as working as an editor and women’s advocate in organisations such as the National Women’s Trade Union League. Her endowment of a major literary award — the Miles Franklin Award — has consolidated her legacy in Australian literary life.Kerrie Davies is the author of Miles Franklin Undercover, released March 2025 (Allen & Unwin), available in the U.S. November 2025. Her previous book, A Wife's Heart, created national discussion about the poet Henry Lawson & his marriage. She has appeared at the Sydney Writers' Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival & the National Folk Festival. A former journalist, Kerrie was a visiting fellow at the State Library NSW and is Senior Lecturer at the School of the Arts Media, UNSW Sydney. Kerrie writes for the Conversation, and lives on the NSW North Coast and Sydney.Tina Kover is the translator of over thirty books from French, including Anne Berest’s The Postcard, Négar Djavadi’s Disoriental, and Emmelie Prophète’s Blue. Her work has won the Albertine Prize, the French Voices Award, and the Lambda Literary Award, and has been shortlisted for the (U.S.) National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and the Scott Moncrieff Prize. She leads workshops for the American Literary Translators Association and masterclasses in literary translation for Durham University. She is also the co-founder of Translators Aloud, a YouTube channel that features literary translators reading from their own work. She lives in Durham, UK.Allison Miriam Woodnutt (née Smith) is an Acquiring Editor and the Publishing & Publicity Manager for Unnamed Press as well as a co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and went on to earn her Masters in 18th & 19th c. Literature from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Before Unnamed, she worked in libraries and bookshops.Brandon Tayloris an Acquiring Editor at Unnamed Press and co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics. He is the author of Minor Black Figures, The Late Americans, Real Life, a finalist of the Booker Prize and the NBCC John Leonard Prize, and Filthy Animals, winner of The Story Prize and a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Cut, Vulture, and elsewhere.