Join acclaimed Australian writer Max Easton at the Gaelic Club in Surry Hills to celebrate the release of his latest novel Now, Autonomy, his follow-up to Paradise Estate and The Magpie Wing.

The launch features live music from Tee Vee Repairman, Lucas Abela (as DJ Smallcock) and Gayab. Doors from 7pm, acts from 8pm. Arrive early for the drinks tab.

Copies of Easton’s three books will be available for purchase on the night.

Tickets are $15 via this page, with all proceeds towards artists. Free entry for First Nations.

You can also get an event ticket which includes a copy of Now, Autonomy (reduced price) for $45 – book collection from Giramondo on the night.

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SET LIST

8.00pm: Gayab

8.45pm: Launch ft. Max Easton

9.15pm: Lucas Abela (as DJ Smallcock)

10:15pm: Tee Vee Repairman

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Now, Autonomy is Max Easton’s third novel set in Sydney between 1996 and the present following his Miles Franklin-longlisted debut The Magpie Wing and its acclaimed follow-up Paradise Estate. The book expands Easton’s project, unique in Australian fiction, of documenting the dramatically changing modes of contemporary life through the lens of underground scenes and subcultures.

Traversing anarchist collectives and experiments in autonomous living, political protest and DIY activism, Max Easton’s third novel continues his thirty-year portrait of working-class life in subcultures and music scenes, exploring intergenerational political solidarity, and the ever-present risk of disillusionment under the heavy hand of the state. Now, Autonomy is a novel about the echoes of the past in the present; about the way in which history repeats, even if the lyrics don’t always rhyme.

‘A novel of radical clarity, about the collective delusions that make culture possible – ideals that fail upwards even as the world falls apart. Max Easton is a real artist, and a real punk.’ – Ursula Robinson-Shaw

‘Max Easton is an archivist, an excavator, and a wrecking ball. His writing carves epiphanies out of epitaphs. These are books to claw your way out with.’ – Patrick Marlborough

Max Easton is a writer from south-west Sydney. His first novel, The Magpie Wing, was longlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, with its acclaimed follow-up, Paradise Estate released in 2023. He is the creator of Barely Human, a zine and cassette bootleg series exploring underground music’s ties to counterculture and subculture. His writing has appeared in Mess+NoiseHEAT, Maximum Rocknroll and Sydney Review of Books. His third novel Now, Autonomy will be published by Giramondo in August 2026.

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Giramondo Publishing

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Contact the host of Book launch | Now, Autonomy by Max Easton