Emma Hardy’s memoir ‘Periodic Bitch’ to be published by Allen & Unwin

Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to Emma Hardy’s memoir Periodic Bitch and a novel, in a two-book deal brokered by Michaela McGuire at a4 Literary.

Periodic Bitch is a captivating literary exploration of menstrual monsters and the culture that made them, told through the author’s own experience.

Every twenty-nine days, Emma Hardy is depressed, weepy, and out of control. Then it passes, and she forgets about it. When a doctor diagnoses her with PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, she begins to question when a mood is just a mood, and when a mood becomes an illness. Searching for truth between the myths and taboos that surround menstruation, Hardy interrogates crime scenes, feminist horrors and the history of women who have been institutionalised for hysterical illnesses to offer a new understanding of our beliefs about illness.

Publisher Alex Craig said: ‘Emma has crafted a mesmerising study of identity, illness and the intersection of cultural assumptions and the history of women’s experience of menstruation and medicalisation in this bold literary memoir. I knew from the first page I was in the company of an elegantly assured and exciting new voice in non-fiction and fiction.’

Emma Hardy said: ‘I’m so thrilled to have found a home for Periodic Bitch with Allen & Unwin. It is a deeply personal book for me, but more importantly it’s the kind of literary nonfiction that I find expansive and exciting to work with as a writer.

When it comes to illnesses like PMDD, we so often hear from institutions or medical professionals. Through this book, I wanted to give a specific voice to the lived experience of menstrual illness beyond the cold, clinical lens I often found myself confronted with while researching. I wanted to explore the dualities and uncertainties that are a part of living with an illness, and a part of being human.

I’m so happy for this book to have found such a great home, and for A&U to have trusted me with my next project, too.’

Michaela McGuire at a4 Literary said: ‘Unwaveringly honest, perspicacious, brilliant and endearing, Periodic Bitch offers a new understanding of our beliefs about illness and the stories we tell, and announces Emma as a profoundly talented new voice. I had to physically restrain myself from cutting and pasting large sections of the manuscript to all my female friends when I first read it, and I am so happy to finally be able to start talking about it.’  

Emma Hardy is an Australian writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her writing has been published in Guernica, The Monthly, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and Going Down Swinging. Emma wrote Periodic Bitch while undertaking a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where her manuscript was highly awarded.

A&U will publish Periodic Bitch in Australia and New Zealand in May 2026.