AustLit

'A small card dangles from sticky tape on her front door, on which her name is scrawled in swift cursive: Eva Cox. Inside the house, tacked to one of the bookshelves that line the narrow hallway, is a fabric poster. In bright red lettering it reads: FEMMO – STIRRING THE PENIS POT. Bustling around her cluttered kitchen, Eva jams the bunch of lavender I’ve brought into a glass jug. “I love lavender,” she says, and I agree. She fetches napkins and a knife for the cake. She chats and smiles. Other people have written about the affection they’ve felt for Eva when they interview her, but the suddenness of it is unexpected.' (Introduction)

'The line, “One day the longing became too great to bear”, appears in “Small Talk”, one of the eight stories that make up Do You Love Me or What?, Sue Woolfe’s collection of longish short fiction. It refers to Diana, an urban Australian who yearns to spend time in the desert and talk – meaningfully, whatever that means for a privileged white woman – with the Indigenous people who live there. She believes it will enable her, a child of migrants who’ve fled some unnamed oppression, to feel as if she belongs here, in this country. She wants this sense of connection deeply. ' (Introduction)