Liam Pieper was raised by his bohemian parents to believe in freedom and creativity, and that there's nothing wrong with smoking a little marijuana to make life more interesting. A fast learner, Liam combined hippie self-actualisation with gen Y entrepreneurialism. By his early teens he had a fledgling drug habit, and a thriving business selling pot around the suburbs of Melbourne from the back of his pushbike. He picked up important life skills, like how to befriend a deranged jujitsu master, how to impress his girlfriend's mother by getting arrested in front of her, and how to negotiate pocket money based on how much he was charging his parents for an ounce. But from these highs (chemical, financial and otherwise), Liam's life fell to dramatic lows. The muddled flower child became a petty criminal and an amoral coke monster. After a family tragedy and then his arrest on several counts of possession and trafficking, Liam had to consider: had it been a mistake to adopt the practices of a counterculture without any of its ethics? Hilarious, compelling and sometimes heartbreaking, The Feel-Good Hit of the Year is a memoir about family, addiction and learning how to live with yourself, from a sharp and original new Australian voice.

Author Biography

Liam Pieper lives in Melbourne. He studied creative writing and then journalism and now works as a freelance writer. Before that he worked as a cook, a music critic, a non-union itinerant labourer and a mediocre criminal. His work has appeared in The Age, the Saturday Paper, the Good Weekend, Meanjin, The Best of the Lifted Brow and The Sleepers Almanac, and he is the co-recipient of the 2014 M Literary Residency. His memoir, The Feel-Good Hit of the Year, was published by Penguin in 2014. You can find him on Twitter @liampieper or on the Internet Proper at liampieper.com.