Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These is the debut collection of short stories from Sydney-based writer Amanda Maxwell with illustrations by Sarah Larnach, published by Serps Press.

The stories and illustrations explore teen years - the fuzzy boundaries between youth and adulthood, friendship and romance, independence and loneliness and the simple, yet inescapable binary of happiness and sorrow.  The stories are written with a fragile awareness; they have a pre-loved and lived in weight to them and are as much about preservation as they are about observation.

The illustrations are inspired by each story, but are made personal by Larnach’s obsession with teenage hero worship and fan-art, which allows her to somehow transform the iconic into the delicate.  Most of the illustrations reference well-known photographs or images by contemporary photographers and film-makers.

The stories in Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These are set across Australia, New Zealand and America, but will appeal to anyone from anywhere who is, or remembers what it was like to be, young.

The launch is on Saturday 29 November 2008
at the Right Angle studios (upstairs from Cookie),
Level 6 Curtin House,
252 Swanston Street,
Melbourne
from 3 to 6pm. 

Limited edition prints of Sarah's artwork from the book will be for sale at the launch and the book will be available for a special launch price of $20