Local Writer Releases Book of Aussie Stories 3 Decades in the Making

CAMBRIDGE, MA, October 31, 2022 – Cambridge author Adrian Zupp has just released a book of urban Australian stories called “All of My Friends Died in Plane Crashes – Fair Dinkum Stories About Wild Aussie Boys (And a Few Wild Sheilas).” A career writer who has written for the likes of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Las Vegas Weekly, Inside Sport (Australia), and was a regular contributor to the now defunct Boston Phoenix, Zupp, who came to the U.S. from Australia in 1995, set out to do two things in his new book: capture a certain time and place, and do it completely authentically.

Zupp writes so fast, and his stories move so quickly, that New York Times bestselling author Lucia Berlin said, “he writes like a house on fire.”

“The irony is that the book took me 27 years to finish, even though the whole thing was written in about 55 hours. You might say that life got in the way for a couple of decades,” says the author.

About half of the book’s 17 stories are based on Zupp’s childhood and youth in the tough western suburbs of Sydney in the 1960s and 70s, while the remainder offer a mix of styles and subjects.

“I was mentored by renowned writers in grad school here in the States and the primary things I learned were to be authentic and to never hold back. In other words, when I write it’s more of a process of releasing rather than writing. When the creative urge hits, I just sit down and type furiously without stopping until my quarter runs out. What I’m feeling goes straight to the page.”

“I wanted to capture a unique time and place, and do it with humor, grit, and honesty. Above all I wanted the stories to be as Aussie as shark attacks,” he adds with a laugh.

“All of My Friends Died in Plane Crashes” is now available on Amazon and in select bookstores.