First Edition. Hardcover. Signed by the Author.

• 215 p. ; 21 cm. #211025

• Archie Weller grew up on a farm called Woonenup in the south-west of Western Australia and later attended Guildford Grammar School near Perth as a boarder. His grandfather’s influence and encouragement were important in Weller’s desire to write. He worked in a variety of mostly labouring jobs before writing his first novel, The Day of the Dog (1981). It was written ‘within a period of six weeks in a spirit of anger after his release from Broome jail for what he regarded as a wrongful conviction.’ Ten years later, the novel was made into the AFI award winning film Blackfellas and the novel republished to coincide with the opening of the film.

  Weller has also published poems and short stories in numerous anthologies and has had plays produced by the Kyana Festival, the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts and the Melbourne Workers Theatre. Nidjera : children crying softly together, a play exploring the emotions of a modern day Koori family and their survival (c. 1990), was written for the Melbourne Workers Theatre. He was commissioned to write a play for Black Swan Theatre as well. He was Writer-in-Residence at the Australian National University in 1984. In the 2000 AFI Awards, Confessions of a Head Hunter, written by Weller and Sally Riley (q.v.), won the Best Short Fiction Film award and was nominated for Best Screenplay in a Short Film.

  In 2001, Weller received a Centenary Medal recognising his service to Australian society and literature.

  A collection of his best short fiction was published in 2009, titled The Window Seat and Other Stories. It was shortlisted for the Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award. In 2023, The Window Seat was republished as part of the University of Queensland Press’ First Nations Classics Series with an introduction by Ernie Dingo.