The Breeding Season

A breathtaking debut that explores love, science, loss and the so-called feminine ideal.

The rains come to Brisbane just as couple Elise and Dan descend into grief. Elise, a scientist, believes that isolation and punishing fieldwork will heal her pain. Dan, a writer, questions the truths of his life, and looks to art for answers. Worlds apart, Elise and Dan must find a way to forgive themselves and each other before it's too late.

An astounding debut novel that forensically and poetically explores the intersections of art and science, sex and death, and the heartbreaking complexity of love. The Breeding Season marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent in Australian literature.

About the Author

Amanda Niehaus is a scientist and writer living in Brisbane, Australia. She has a PhD in ecological physiology, a branch of biology that examines the effects of environments on bodies, and most of her research has focused on metamorphosis or the nexus of sex and death.

Amanda is interested in the interplay between scientific concepts and human bodies, desires, and fears. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, AGNI, NOON Annual, Griffith Review, The Writer, and Overland, among others; have been anthologised in Best Australian Essays; and her story "Breeding Season" (on which this novel is based) won the 2017 VU Short Story Prize. The Breeding Season is her first novel.