AustLit

'We decided to take Dad out to the old sheep dip because we were feeling kind of guilty for getting him committed. I mean, we had to do it: he'd been on a five-month bender and had blown most of his savings, and then some of Yas's too, and when he took eight Xanax alongside a bottle of whiskey we had to call the CATT team, and that was that...'

 (Publication abstract)

'Our Mother's face stares out at me, weathered yet warm. The wrinkles in her face run deep, intersecting like wild, unmarked Karachi streets. There is a certain distrust in her gaze, but upon closer inspection, it is clear that this is not something born from cruelty or a meanness of the spirit. This is simply the imprint of experience, some fond, others painful.' 

 (Publication abstract)

'I came home to find Marlene sitting on the porch with a rifle resting on the blanket across her knees. Her trembling lips set in a hard line, she stared on past me. She asked me to make her a coffee. 

'Inside, I stirred the muddy brown liquid slowly. Marlene's house was one of the older buildings, a house that stood on top of a dusty storage area where her children's sun-bleached playthings and her husband's tools had rested, forgotten beneath her home. Spiders made their homes in the beams and lizards lay languidly in the nooks and crannies afforded by plastic cars, cubby-houses and bikes..'

 (Publication abstract)

'It started after Mrs Lowell told Mary not to sit so close to the fan for the third time. Every November, when the mercury in the novelty thermometer outside the nurse's office began to creep towards forty, and the liquorice bitumen of the basketball court began to shimmer with heat haze, we tried to raise the windows to let some air in...' (Publication abstract)