
Mae Archer
ALLi Author Member
Location: Australia & New Zealand
Skills: Press/Media Interview, Reading/Literary Event, Self-publishing Workshop/Training, Speaking Engagement/Lecture, Writing Workshop
Amra Pajalić is an award-winning author, an editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. Her short story collection The Cuckoo’s Song (Pishukin Press, 2022) features previously published and prize-winning stories. Her debut novel The Good Daughter, was published by Text Publishing in 2009 and won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Civic Choice Award and is re-released as Sabiha’s Dilemma (Pishukin Press, 2022).
Her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award. She is co-editor of the anthology Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014) which was shortlisted for the 2015 Children’s Book Council of the year awards. She works as a high school teacher and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at La Trobe University.
Amra Pajalić publishes her dark fiction using pen name A. P. Pajalic. She also publishes romance novels under pen name Mae Archer.
Mae Archer's books

Sabiha's Dilemma
"Sabiha and her mother Bahra are more than mother and daughter, they’re best friends. It’s been them against the world, with Sabiha being her mother’s carer and confidante during her periodic bipolar breakdowns.

The Cuckoo's Song
"Award-winning author Amra Pajalić showcases her gritty, poignant and sometimes bruising voice in this eclectic short story book of previously published and prize-winning stories. Featuring powerful and moving stories of family dissolution, deprivation of war, tenderness of family and the heart-rending experiences of mental illness. Thriller stories with a twist of vindictiveness and retribution, and love stories that make the heart sing, this collection will delight and entertain. The Cuckoo’s Song—Francesca is ten when a gypsy fortune-teller told her the day and the hour of her death and she has been waiting since.

Woman on the Edge
A woman is pushed to her limits—until she pushes back.

Things Nobody Knows But Me
‘Brave, compassionate, searingly honest and funny, this is a memoir in a voice like no other. Amra Pajalić’s love letter to her mother is a book that grabs at your heart and doesn’t let go until the final page.’ ALICE PUNG

Growing up Muslim in Australia
Twelve authentic and powerful stories about growing up Muslim in Australia

Return to Me
A fatal accident. A parallel world. Second chances don’t come often.