Melissa Lucashenko

Early work

Lucashenko's first work to be published was the novel Steam Pigs (1997), which won the Dobbie Literary Award for debut Australian women writers. It was also shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (South East Asia and South Pacific).

In 1998, she released the novel Killing Darcy, which won the Royal Blind Society's Talking Book Award for young readers (also referred to as the Aurora Prize). It was also a finalist for the 1998 Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel and longlisted for the 1998 James Tiptree Award.

In 1999 her third novel, Hard Yards, was published. It was a finalist for the 1999 NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the 2001 Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award. In 2002 her fourth novel Too Flash, written for young adults, was published.

Critical success

Lucashenko's fifth novel, Mullumbimby, won the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction Book in 2013 and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing in 2014, as well as being nominated for several other awards. In 2015 it was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award.

In 2019 her sixth novel Too Much Lip won the Miles Franklin Award and Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance. The novel was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Judges called it "a fearless, searing and unvarnished portrait of generational trauma cut through with acerbic humour." Cenozoic Pictures optioned Too Much Lip for a screen adaptation, with Lucashenko as a co-writer and co-creator alongside Cenozoic's Veronica Gleeson.

Her seventh novel, Edenglassie, was released in 2023 and won the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance for the second time, as well as the Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction. In late 2024, it won the ARA Historical Novel Prize, being commended for capturing "the brutal realities of colonisation while celebrating the resilience of Indigenous cultures."

Non-fiction writing

Lucashenko is also an essayist, winning the 2013 Long Feature Writing Walkley Award for "Sinking below sight: Down and out in Brisbane and Logan". Speaking about this essay, Lucashenko said that she was partly informed by her studies in public policy.

Novels

• —— (1997). Steam Pigs. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702229350.
• —— (1999). Hard Yards. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702230806.
• —— (2002). Uptown Girl. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702233340.
• —— (2013). Mullumbimby. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702239199.
• —— (2018). Too Much Lip. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702259968.
• —— (2023). Edenglassie. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702266126.

Essays

• —— (2005). "Who Let the Dogs Out?". Griffith Review.
• —— (2004). "Not Quite White in the Head". Griffith Review (2).
• —— (2005). "Our Bodies". Griffith Review (4).
• —— (2005). "Globalisation, Kimberley Style". Griffith Review (6).
• —— (2007). "How Green Is My Valley?". Griffith Review (12).
• —— (2009). "On the Same Page, Right?". Griffith Review (26).
• —— (2009). "The Silent Majority". Griffith Review (26).
• —— (2013). "Sinking Below Sight". Griffith Review (41).
• —— (2013). "History's Footnote, or, a Wolvi Incident". In Jane Caro (ed.). Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 9780702249907.
• —— (2020). "It's No Accident That Blak Australia Has Survived the Pandemic So Well. Survival Is What We Do". The Guardian.