MYKAELA SAUNDERS Always Will Be. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Mykaela Saunders’ stories imagine a future where the connection to land and culture is central. Mykaela Saunders won an Aurealis award for her exciting and thought-provoking anthology of First Nations speculative fiction This All Come Back Now. In the same year her...
CARMEL BIRD Love Letter to Lola: extract
Carmel Bird gives voice to the extinct, the endangered and the overlooked in her new collection of stories. Carmel Bird is one of Australia’s most gifted and original writers, and we’re delighted to bring you the title story from her latest collection, Love Letter to...
SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN Seven Empty Houses. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her novel Fever Dream, Argentine writer Samantha Schweblin has a talent for unsettling stories. These stories are weird and wonderful, and, given the strange behaviour of people that we hear about every day, completely...
BETH SPENCER The Age of Fibs: extract
Award-winning author Beth Spencer ranges across popular culture, the environment, and the body in her new collection. Forthright, feminist, full of wry wit and insight whether dissecting relations between men and women or contemplating the fragility of nature, The Age...
MYKAELA SAUNDERS (ed.) This All Come Back Now. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
This anthology showcases the range of First Nations speculative fiction. This All Come Back Now is a collection of speculative fiction by First Nations authors curated by Mykaela Saunders, who observes that First Nations writers in this genre are rarely able to get...
HILMA WOLITZER Today a woman went mad in the supermarket. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Hilma Wolitzer’s stories capture the extraordinary within the ordinary in this collection that showcases her work from the 1960s to now. A woman went mad in the supermarket … well, haven’t we all felt like that at times, especially if we have had two small...
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...
GEOVANI MARTINS The Sun On My Head. Reviewed by Ann Skea
This debut collection of short stories from Geovani Martins gives voice to life in Brazil’s favelas. Fryin’ at home just wasn’t gonna fly. For kids like us, riding dirty’s a cinch, the parley’s slick. We hit up Vitim at his place, then we rolled up to Cueball’s...
AS PATRIC The Butcherbird Stories. Reviewed by James McKenzie Watson
AS Patrić won the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Black Rock White City. In this new collection he demonstrates his mastery of the short story. Patrić’s fourth short-story collection, The Butcherbird Stories, reads with a misty and dreamlike intensity, exploring...
STEPHEN ORR Datsunland. Reviewed by Carmel Bird
The short stories in Datsunland strike notes of moodiness and dark irony. Dreams and fantasies inform the lives of many of the doomed characters in this moody collection of 14 distinctly ‘literary’ stories. There is much here about fantasy, much about fate, about...
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