Amr Pajalic

Teacher, author, and St Albans Secondary College alumni Amra Pajalic has has had her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award. 

There were 89 entries submitted for the Award this year. All shortlisted authors receive $2,000. The winner of the overall prize will receive $25,000 and there is also a $5,000 prize for the best debut biography/memoir. 

Things Nobody Knows But Me is a memoir about Amra growing up in St Albans and being parented by her single mother who suffers from Bi Polar. Surprisingly funny, Things Nobody Knows But Me is a tender portrait of family and migration, beautifully told. It captures a wonderful sense of bicultural place and life as it weaves between St Albans in suburban Australia and Bosanska Gradiška in Bosnia. Ultimately it is the heartrending story of a mother and daughter bond fractured and forged by illness and experience. Fatima emerges as a remarkable but wounded woman who learns that her daughter really loves her.