EMMA ASHMERE Dreams They Forgot: extract
This week we’re delighted to bring you the short story ‘Fallout’ from Emma Ashmere’s debut collection Dreams They Forgot. What haunting stories these are, with their ghosts, betrayals and secrets, ranging back and forth across time and continents. A...
JO LENNAN In the Time of Foxes. Reviewed by Michelle McLaren
Predator or prey? Jo Lennan’s debut collection of stories lures the reader into a world where foxes can mean many things. In 2011, when the London Shard was under construction, workers were stunned to discover a fox had taken up residence on the...
KIM KELLY Her Last Words. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Historical novelist Kim Kelly (author of Walking, Sunshine and Wild Chicory) turns to the 21st century in her new novel to deliver a tale of intrigue and literary ambition. What a strange year 2020 has been. The world has already had bushfires, floods, pandemics,...
MIA WALSCH Money for Something: extract
This week we have an extract from Mia Walsch’s memoir Money for Something: Sex work. Drugs. Life. Need. It’s a lively, insightful, frank and at times harrowing account of a young woman’s experiences as a sex worker. Her mental illness makes it difficult for her to...
VICTORIA HANNAN Kokomo. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, Victoria Hannan’s debut is a rewarding journey. Victoria Hannan’s Kokomo takes us deep into the conundrum of love, with its heartbreak and trauma. In this, her first...
SL LIM Real Differences. Reviewed by Ann Skea
SL Lim’s debut won this year’s UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and explores questions of race, religion and culture. Nick, who tells this story, is a rather disengaged white Australian man who, as he tells us, ‘graduated...
IMBI NEEME The Spill: extract
This week we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Imbi Neeme’s debut The Spill, winner of the 2019 Penguin Literary Prize and published just last month. It’s an absorbing novel about two sisters, and how differently each remembers the past. When Nicole was 11 and...
LAURA JEAN MCKAY The Animals in That Country. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
Laura Jean McKay’s novel asks us to see the world through animals’ eyes. It was just past Goulburn on the Hume Highway, heading back to Sydney last Christmas. The Southern Highlands were aflame, and a southerly had pushed up smoke clouds as thick as a...
JESSIE TU A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing: extract
This week we’re thrilled to bring you an extract from Jessie Tu’s novel A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing – an exhilarating, disturbing, unputdownable debut about music, sex, and, yes, loneliness and connection. Jena Lin was a musical child prodigy, touring the great...
DANI POWELL Return to Dust: extract
This week we’re delighted to bring you an extract from Dani Powell’s debut novel Return to Dust. As the title suggests, it is a novel about grief, but it is also a vivid and intimate portrait of the landscape and people of central Australia. Of long road trips with...
KATHRYN HIND Hitch: extract
This week’s extract is from two-time prize-winner Hitch, the debut novel from Australian author Kathryn Hind. Hitch was the inaugural winner of the Penguin Literary Prize (you can read more about the prize and the 2020 winner, Sophie Overett, here) and published...
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