Top End Girl

A deadly memoir about being bold, black and brave in work, life and love

'Sharing my story is important ... I think it is true that you don't aspire to be what you cannot see. I would like this book to show you that you can push yourself to do things you never dreamed you would do.'

As a young Larrakia Tiwi girl Miranda Tapsell often felt like an outsider. Growing up, she looked for faces like hers on our screens. There weren't many. And too often there was a negative narrative around First Nation lives, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women especially. As she got older, Miranda stopped expecting others would help change things and set about doing something herself. Combining her pride in her Aboriginality and passion for romantic comedies with her love of Darwin, the Tiwi Islands and the Top End, Miranda co-wrote, produced and starred in the box office hit Top End Wedding.

In this engaging memoir, Miranda shares the path she took to acting and how her role in The Sapphires and then in Love Child inspired her to create a film about coming back to family and culture. And, it would turn out, that as she was writing her romantic lead she was also conjuring up some magic that saw a real-life love ignite. This deadly, ballad-loving rom-com nerd also asks us all to open our minds and our hearts to the importance of country and culture, In doing so, Miranda shows us how we will all be richer for it.

Funny, wise and thought-provoking, Top End Girl will have you at hello.

About the Author

Miranda Tapsell was born in Darwin and her people are the Larrakia. She grew up in Kakadu National Park and began performing at the age of seven. At 16, she won the Bell Shakespeare Company regional performance scholarship. After finishing school she was accepted to study at NIDA fulltime and since graduating has built a stellar career on stage, screen and television. After a starring role the world-renowned film The Sapphires, Miranda received two Logie Awards for her role in Love Child.

A career highlight saw Miranda cast as the new host of the perennial favourite children's series, Play School. Recently, she has had roles on Channel 9's Doctor Doctor, ABC's comedy Get Krackin', legal drama Newton's Law for ABCTV, Foxtel's Secret City as well as ABCTV's Cleverman and Stan's Wolf Creek.

She wrote, produced and starred in the box office hit Top End Wedding and has her own podcast on BuzzFeed, Pretty for an Aboriginal, with Nakkiah Lui, which rocks the traditional perceptions of Indigenous Australia and challenges rigid mindsets of what women of colour can and cannot do. Top End Girl is her literary debut.