AustLit

'In the wake of the mid-2010s ‘personal essay boom’, writers are shaping and stretching the personal essay form to share stories that refuse a traditional telling.'

'I am sitting in a café in North Melbourne adjacent to the hospital. It’s filled with older people anticipating or denying or recovering from the usual bodily attrition, sporty-looking medical staff with lanyards drinking long blacks, and people on break from day-programs in street clothes trying to blend in. These are people with enough money to sit in a café and eat something and to dawdle while doing it, not worried about = being asked to leave. A very limited inner-city melting pot, in other words, of which I, on my laptop typing this essay, am a part.' (Introduction)

'In 1956, describing the process of artistic creation, the French writer and dramatist Henry de Montherlant wrote that le bonheur écrit à l’encre blanche sur des pages blanches: ‘happiness writes in white ink on a white page.’ When we attempt to capture the visceral nature of happiness in words, it doesn’t show up.' (Introduction)

'Ellena Savage is an author and academic. Her work is published in literary journals and anthologies around the world, including Paris Review Daily, Sydney Review of Books, Choice Words and Lifted Brow. Blueberries is her first collection.

'Ellena is the recipient of several grants and prizes, including the 2019–21 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship.' (Introduction)