Love, Dad

A must-read for all parents, Love, Dad explores what it means to be a father in the twenty-first century.

The father of two young boys, Laurie reflects on how his own experiences have defined the kind of man he is and the kind of parent he would like to become. His stories – triumphant, funny and sad – draw on Laurie’s own childhood experiences and important relationships with family and mates, alongside the challenges of trauma and mental health shared by many men. This memoir openly discusses how Laurie strives to overcome hallenges – from breaking generational cycles to maintaining joy in work and parenthood – and how others new to parenting can learn from this authentic story of a first-time dad and his family.

Author Biography

Laurie Steed is a writer living and working in the Wadjak region on the traditional lands of the Noongar people. His fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in anthologies including Best Australian Stories and Award-Winning Australian Writing. He is the author of You Belong Here, published in 2018 and shortlisted for the 2018 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, and Greater City Shadows, which won the 2021 Henry Handel Richardson Flagship Fellowships for Short Story Writing from Varuna – The National Writers’ House and was shortlisted for the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.