Here’s a flattering profile of me in T Magazine Australia.
I live and work on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia.
Find me on Instagram.
My first novel, The Work, was published in April 2024. My other books are all non-fiction and include Who Gets to be Smart (2021), Eggshell Skull (2018), and Beauty (2019).
I run a weekly newsletter. Subscribe to News & Reviews here.
In 2024 I co-founded Bibliocarta — a company offering travel for readers and a library for travellers.
Together with the Women’s Justice Network I founded the ‘Freadom Inside’ project that gets books to women incarcerated in NSW. We’re now crowdfunding to pay women with lived experience to run book club programs for those still inside. Support them here.
Tour dates announced in July
Mitchell is a brilliant biologist, committed to the environment and the growing global antinatalist movement. For one month each year he lives with his colleague Frances in a utopia of radical equality and scientific dedication in Antarctica. They are concluding the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location. It is a biodiversity insurance policy against humanity’s devastating effects on the rapidly warming planet.
But when their helicopter doesn’t pick them up, and strange things begin to happen, their faith in science is suddenly not enough.
If they don’t get back to McMurdo Station before the last flight home they face a long dark polar winter together. Alone. As the days get shorter, these two people of firm logic and reason begin finding fault lines in their perfect social experiment. Thrilling, original and almost unbearably suspenseful, Seed offers an uneasy glimpse into isolation, love and our worst fears.
Thrilling, original and almost unbearably suspenseful, Seed offers an uneasy glimpse into isolation, love and our worst fears.
April 2025
Lally has invested everything into her gallery in Manhattan and the sacrifices are finally paying off. Pat is a scholarship boy desperate to establish himself in Sydney’s antiquities scene. When they meet at New York’s Armory Show their chemistry is instant—fighting about art and politics is just foreplay.
With an ocean between them they try to get back to work, but they’re each struggling to balance money and ambition with the love of art that first drew them to their strange industry.
If love costs and art takes, what price do we pay for wanting it all? The Work is about the biggest intersections of life: of art and commerce, of intimacy and distance, of talent and entitlement, and of labour and privilege. Dazzling, funny, and unforgettable, it is an epic and forensic exploration of modern love and passion, politics and power. The Work announces a brilliant new voice in Australian fiction.
PRAISE FOR THE WORK
— Annabel Crabb
“The Work is a glamorous and dirty capitalist fever dream, highlighting the individualistic tensions and ambitions rife within the art world. This dynamic novel is complex, opulent and horny.”
— Ella Baxter
“Lee’s debut novel is like Caoilinn Hughes’ The Orchid and the Wasp meets Andrew Lipstein’s Last Resort. A smart, sexy page-turner, The Work cleverly traces the flow of cultural capital in the international art world, bringing sizzle and romance to the age-old tension of art versus commerce.”
— Madeleine Gray
“Pacy, racy and high-octane, The Work delves into the volatile world of contemporary art, forcefully exposing it as a bedfellow to the world of high finance.”
— Caoilinn Hughes
“A thoroughly modern love story, The Work is Rooney-esque in how it handles the collision of our ideals, our ambition and our feelings. A brilliant meditation on the gap between the person we wish to be and who we actually are. I was completely gripped.”
— Bridie Jabour
“Bri Lee has an uncanny, remarkable and refreshing way of drawing you in quickly. By the first chapter, I felt like I personally knew the characters and was LIVING the moments with them. Bri’s style of writing is comfortable even during uncomfortable moments in the story. Work, power, passion, intimacy and vulnerabilities collide, and best of all, SMUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
— Lillian Ahenkan aka Flex Mami
— Emily Maguire
“A thoroughly modern romp through the complexities of love, family, class and gender. The kind of novel that has everyone at book club talking over one another.”
— Jamila Rizvi
“A completely exhilarating, powerful, mesmerising novel, filled with ALL my favourite things: sex, art and New York City. This is a searing story about artistic labour, ambition and the endlessly exhausting pursuits of our ideal self. I already knew Lee to be an exceptional writer. Now, I know she is also an exceptional novelist.”
— Jessie Tu
“Bombastic, libidinal, and even vulgar, The Work hurtles the reader through bright lights, big cities, and even bigger questions about art and life—all the while beating with a warm Queensland heart.”
— Jessica Stanley
“A dazzling meditation on the economy of taste-making and the contradictory cast of affluent, idealistic and predatory people that make it go round. An ambitious and meticulously modern fable about art, sex, money, power and the perils of self-curation.”
— Gina Rushton
“A punchy, pacey and powerful interrogation of the politics of love and art. Bri Lee writes sex like Sally Rooney and critiques capitalism and privilege like Bri Lee. I couldn’t stop reading this daring and dazzling book.”
— Paige Clarke
“What is art and who gets to make it, champion it, sell it, buy it? A fresh and compelling answer to timeless questions. Urgent, sexy and deliciously cynical, The Work interrogates the unholy marriage of art and capitalism.”
— Neela Janakiramanan
“About exclusions and inclusions, old and new art and the spoken—and unspoken—rules governing privilege and class, The Work covers so much ground impressively without being laboured or weighty. I’ve long admired Bri Lee’s non-fiction and investigative writing but her fiction work is wholly its own—I couldn’t put it down.”
— Zara Wong
Far from offering any 'equality of opportunity', Australia's education system exacerbates social stratification.
— Christos Tsiolkas, author of Damascus
“Fascinating, eye-opening . . . a sharp wake-up call”
— Lillian Ahenkan aka Flex Mami,
author of The Success Experiment
“Thoughtful, surprising and exquisitely written. Bri Lee once again challenges us to confront the structures that shape, and restrict, our understanding of the world.”
— Maddison Connaughton,
editor of The Saturday Paper
In recent decades women have made momentous progress fighting the patriarchy, yet they are held to ever-stricter, more punishing physical standards. Self-worth still plummets and eating disorders are more deadly for how easily they are dismissed.
— Charlotte Wood
“Eggshell Skull is not an easy read. But it's an important reflection of the reality we live in. If you struggle to understand what rape culture is, this book will give you a clarity that might shock you.”
— Clementine Ford
© BRI LEE 2025