AustLit

'There were seven of us. Five in the car, two in the boot. We were driving to a party no one knew for sure was happening. This is how our nights played out. We followed hints and whisper-trails of action, motivated by the thrill of the chase, or maybe just the fear of staying still and missing out and remaining unseen by the enormous crowd of people that populated our imaginations.' (Publication abstract)

'They met in a journalism lecture at the sandstone-and-jacaranda University of Queensland, set high on a bend of the Brisbane River. Dad was the guest lecturer with no tertiary qualifications, and Mum was the student who, at the age of thirty-one, had worked through night school to fulfil her dream of going to university. The very first time she saw him she knew she'd marry him. It was, I'm afraid to say, love at first sight. She knocked on his door with an armful of lemons when he was sick one day, and six months later they were pregnant with me. There was a wedding and they bought a small old Queenslander at the top of Rainworth Hill.' (Publication abstract)