UQP acquires first non-fiction from Ellen van Neerven

UQP is delighted to announce the acquisition of Ellen van Neerven’s first work of nonfiction, Personal Score, which is a ground-breaking look at sport on this continent from a First Nations and queer perspective.

Sport is such a big part of ‘Australian’ life and identity but one that is rarely unpacked or questioned. With the incredible upsurge in the popularity of women’s sport comes the potential to reshape the narratives around sport and culture. As Personal Score examines, many athletes challenge mainstream views of gender and sexuality, and use sport and their role within it to effect change not only in their own sporting realm, but more broadly in the wider culture and society.

Moreover, van Neerven interrogates the implications of playing sport on stolen land and how this complicates questions of identity around sport, who plays it and where. Thus, Personal Score is also a meditation on Indigenous connections to place and land, examining the earliest sports played here, and paying tribute to influential First Nations sportspeople.

UQP cannot wait to share this important and necessary book with readers in March 2023 – and are honoured that Associate Professor Jeanine Leane is working editorially with Ellen to complete it.

Publisher Aviva Tuffield says:

‘Personal Score is an extraordinary work from one of this country’s most exceptional writers and brilliant thinkers. Ellen taps into their personal experiences of playing football to examine timely questions around sport, identity and sovereignty – not shying away from sport’s shameful history of racism, homophobia and transmisogyny. They also consider the history of sport in this place – collaboratively, too, by incorporating multiple First Nations voices. This is a unique and generous book in terms of style and beyond impressive in its scope –I’ve never read anything quite like it.’

Ellen van Neerven says:

‘I’m writing the book I’ve always wanted to read. I grew up with two loves: writing and playing sport, which felt as connected as they were separate. To bring them together in this book is exhilarating. It’s a book about the possibilities of sport from an intersectional perspective. Personal Score has been brewing since 2014, and I’ve been supported along the way by an Australia Council grant and a Peter Blazey Fellowship. I am excited to be publishing the book with Aviva and the UQP team. I feel grateful for the opportunity to work with Wiradjuri writer Jeanine Leane on the manuscript.’

Ellen van Neervenis an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, won the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Ellen has published two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize and highly commended for the 2016 Wesley Michel Wright Prize; and Throat, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Ellen is a current Sidney Myer Creative Fellow.