Amra Pajalic

Amra Pajalić won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Civic Choice Award for her debut novel The Good Daughter, re-released as Sabiha's Dilemma (Pishukin Press, 2022). The anthology she co-edited, Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2015 Children's Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall Award for Information Books and was selected by the Grattan Institute for the 2015 Summer Reading List for Prime Minister. Her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award. Her short story collection The Cuckoo's Song (Pishukin Press, 2022) features previously published and prize-winning stories.

Amra is the author of the Sassy Saints series , a young adult contemporary trilogy set in Melbourne’s western suburbs. These stories feature smart-mouthed teens, love triangles, fake friends, and fierce girl power, offering a refreshing take on multicultural Australian life.

She is also the creator of the gripping Seka Torlak crime mystery series beginning with Time Kneels Between Mountains.. Forged on the war-torn streets of Srebrenica, Seka Torlak fights for justice, retribution and truth.

​Amra is committed to accessibility and inclusion in publishing. Through her micropress, Pishukin Press, she releases her titles in a wide range of formats—including audiobook, large print, dyslexic font, paperback, ebook, and hardback—to ensure all readers can experience her stories.

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When she's not writing, Amra is podcasting on Amra’s Armchair Anecdotes, mentoring emerging writers, and delivering workshops across Australia on self-publishing, writing craft, and creative resilience.

Amra lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband of twenty-nine years and her daughter. She is a high school English teacher working at her former high school, teaching students who like her, are from a Non-English Speaking Background.

Amra has a serious tea addiction and, while she writes, she rotates between the dozens of loose leaf tea flavours that she has in her pantry. She always loves to hear from readers. Amra also writes romance as Mae Archer.