ABOUT VENERO
Venero Armanno is an Australian-born author of Sicilian heritage. His literary career commenced during a visit to his family’s small village at the age of ten, when he looked up at the fire fountains and flowing lava of the nearby active volcano Mt Etna and promised himself he would one day be a writer. True to that promise, to date he has published eleven acclaimed novels, two short story collections, and with many new books to be published in 2025 and 2026.
For three decades Venero’s works have populated bookshelves and the captured hearts of readers worldwide.
His epic work of fiction The Volcano won the 2002 Queensland Premiers Literary Award for Best Novel of the Year and was also shortlisted for the Courier Mail Best Book of the Year. Firehead was shortlisted in the 1999 Queensland Premiers Literary Award for Best Novel of the Year.
Venero is the recipient of a Commonwealth Medal for Services to Australian Literature and is a professor of creative writing at The University of Queensland.
A little more…
Venero’s books have been published in USA, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Israel and South Korea. He has travelled widely and lived for a year and a half in Paris.
Once the singer, songwriter and wannabe rock star in the band Paradox, in 2009 Venero collaborated in writing part of the Queensland Music Festival’s Presidentsland with music legend Ed Kuepper.
In 2010 and 2011 Venero wrote the libretto for The Australian Voices’ “epic of love”, Moon, which still tours from time to time.