AustLit

'My younger brother, Wayne, died unexpectedly on 26 March. He had experienced difficulties with his general health for several decades, and yet, we did not expect him to die so suddenly. He lived on a public-housing estate near my mother’s house, and for more than twenty years he had eaten dinner at her table each night, arriving at the same time and leaving a half-hour later, having cleared his plate. On the night before he died, Wayne ate little of his dinner, explaining that he was not hungry, and left my mother’s house for the final time.' (Introduction) 

'I drive the ATV south from the hotel to Jackie O’ Beach Club. Kosta is on the back with one arm around my waist and the other gripping his phone, filming for Instagram. I tell him to put his phone away a lot but this time I get it. I park suddenly.' (Introduction)

'Art is a magnificent illusion of possibility. It expresses the best of us, as well as the worst: it encompasses everything we are.'  (Introduction)

'A vast encampment – brimming with faces – stretches back farther than my eyes can see. There are no palm trees, only aerials: an enormous tangle that plays host to a symphony of sea birds whose droppings add texture to the flapping Visqueen patchwork roofs below.' (Introduction) 

'He, they, spend perhaps an hour, a week, a year swimming through the soft dirt, learning to navigate around errant roots, to push through clumps of clay, to find ways around the tunnels of worms so as to not damage their carefully crafted tunnels of home.' (Introduction)

'I have been without any work for a long time and the listless days are heavy for being so bare: days when I’ve carved no steps into the story’s pages, days when I’ve annotated no clocks, written no words above the straight lines of minute hands and hours.' (Introduction) 

'The promise of this new destination was now a bridge of a different sort, a tremendous light-filled opportunity. Less her father’s failed garden path connecting two halves of a divided city than an elegant suspension bridge spanning a before and an after – a slender piece of steel.' (Introduction) 

'The memories of their speech together came back to her on the water, the gentle flow of back and forth. Now she took his part and added it to hers. It seemed such a natural progression out on the flowing waters of the bay.' (Introduction)

'Juvenilia is frequently bad, but charmingly so; it seems emotionally lucid and unembarrassed of its own literary shortcomings.' (Introduction)

'I couldn’t move to Australia even if I wanted to, due to having two children with autism.' (Introduction) 

'As a writer, I find opportunities to tell my story. Us artistic mob share our stories to audiences through poetry, art, music, theatre and dance; through this, we celebrate who we are and honour those who have come before us.

'One space (there are many) where we consistently struggle to feel heard or tell our story is in the health system.' (Introduction)