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About Red Dust Running

Matters of the heart have always made Annabelle run for the hills – literally.

After a disastrous relationship effectively torched her personal and professional life in Sydney, Annabelle is back in Brisbane. She’s about to start her dream job launching and curating a First Nations gallery in the city, and this time, nothing is getting in the way of her important work. Certainly not romance, even if her new neighbour is really cute.
Everything is going to plan until a birthday trip to the rodeo with her tiddas brings Annabelle up close and (very) personal with Dusty Davies, bona fide cowboy. Opposites may attract, but Annabelle’s not built for the rodeo life. Anyway, Dusty doesn’t take art and activism seriously like Annabelle does. It’s just a country fling ...

Can a real-life cowboy convince Annabelle to compromise for love, or will he be just another man left in the dust?

About Anita Heiss

Dr Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author (or editor) of over 20 books; non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction and children’s novels. She is a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation of central New South Wales, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the GO Foundation, and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. Anita is also the Publisher at Large of Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster cultivating First Nations talent.

As an artist in residence at La Boite Theatre, she adapted her novel Tiddas for the stage. It premiered at the 2022 Brisbane Festival and was produced by Belvoir St for the Sydney Festival in 2024.

Her novel, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, about the Great Flood of Gundagai, won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Indigenous Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize and the 2022 ABIA Awards. Anita’s first children’s picture book is Bidhi Galing (Big Rain), also about the Great Flood of Gundagai.

Anita released Dirrayawadha (Rise Up) in about the frontier war in Bathurst in 2024. Her most recent novel is Red Dust Running.

Anita enjoys running, eating chocolate and being a creative disruptor.