AustLit

'Claire G. Coleman says in her author's note that her debut novel Terra Nullius is influenced by many popular works of postcolonial literature such as My Place by Sally Morgan, Benang by Kim Scott, and Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. The influence from these stories is plain. Coleman writes with similar attitudes, anger, and frustrations with the history of Australian colonialism. While the outset of the book begins in a world with which we may be more familiar, the story swiftly transforms into a science-fiction sort of future in which the tensions between colonizers and colonized are explored from a distinctive perspective. The story may borrow elements from stories that came before, but it is inventive enough to claim its own space.' (Introduction)

'Pippa Reynolds is a novelist on the rise, one who draws greater critical and popular attention with each work. Exhaustive in her artistry, she carries a notebook everywhere she goes, jotting down scraps from other people's lives, meanings for unfamiliar words, observed details of place and space.  Her husband's musical background and his way of speaking "with the force of poetry" are his chief charms. Pippa asserts, "He'll be good for my writing" (188). She eyes a future of winning awards. Pippa is ambitious, willing to work hard, determined; in fact, she has "everything needed for greatness except talent" (205).' (Introduction)

'Helen Garner needs no introduction. Likewise her stories in this collection emerge on the page without guide, without preface, with no prologue, no opening referential epigraph. Garner's table of contents, like a menu of courses, displays fourteen curated tales. Each story—depicting separate sets of lives, people, ranging literary points of view, and diverse dialects—may stand alone, and yet the collection's sequence makes a perfect complement. While no overt analysis need be made of the presented order, its unfolding progression satisfies by occasional return to familiar inflection, texture, flavor, pang.' (Introduction)

'When reading a critically acclaimed collection of short stories penned by an author "with the support of the Australia Council Grant [that] includes [an] award-winning novella," one has to ask who decides that this particular writer or that this particular set of short stories is worthy of such magnanimous support. Who, in other words, decided that the short novella "Quarry" should win an award, and which award? (It is never mentioned anywhere in or on the book which award "Quarry" won or when). Though the cover blurbs—and there are three of them: two on the back cover, one on the front—use such complimentary phrases as "intense," "visceral" (which is used twice), as well as "surprising," "brilliant," "earthly," and "eloquently," these stories are—according to a blurb on the back cover—simultaneously "unsettling" and "macabre," so much so that a second reading of this collection will not likely be forthcoming.' (Introduction)

'A Sea-Chase, Roger McDonald's tenth novel, opens in late 1970s Australia on Judy, "a young teacher sobbing at her desk . . . after [her] rioting class fled for the day" (3). In the midst of this low point, though, something serendipitous happens: Ken Redlynch, a fellow teacher and acting inspector, walks in. While comforting her, he learns that she is the daughter of Elizabeth Darke, a famous geneticist and leading figure in Scientists Against Nuclear Testing (SANT). Politically minded himself, Ken takes an interest in Judy, and through him she gets introduced to a "skinny blue-eyed wildwood creature" (22) named Wes Bannister, who lives aboard Ken's boat, the Rattler. Wes and Ken are passionate sailors, and Judy, through her relationship with Wes and friendship with Ken, discovers her own love for "a breath of wind on a section of taut canvas" (56).' (Introduction)

'The Passage of Love opens with first-person modern-day Robert Crofts, who at the end of his career as a writer is struggling to find the creative impulse for his next book. He visits a women's prison to give a talk and is captivated by a particular inmate who explains his previous work to him, saying, "I thought he was explaining himself to his mother as a way of explaining himself to himself" (12). This is an on-ramp to what the bulk of the novel will grapple with: Robert Crofts telling himself his own story.' (Introduction)

'K. M. Steele's Road to Tamarlin could be labeled both a mystery and a coming-of-age story, as, in a matter of hours, two teenage girls are chased out of a cave, their mother goes missing, and their father is implicated in the disappearance. One minute these young women play dress-up in their mother's clothing, and the next they worry about being assaulted by a stranger before they say goodnight to a parent for the last time. This novel does not so much use its pages to reveal the effects of grief or investigative concern but rather chronicles the cause and effect of incomplete stories, how with-holding information allows for suspicion to linger, anger to fester, and estrangement to become permanent.' (Introduction)

'Byron Bay, on Australia's east coast, is a town populated by a curious cross-section of hippies, surfers, backpackers, and celebrities. Whether they come for the area's natural beauty, its relative seclusion from paparazzi, or its relaxed attitude to recreational drug use, the residents of Byron Shire inhabit a curious intersection of money and politics. Michael Wilding's Little Demon is set squarely within that intersection, blending humor, mystery, and conspiracy to create a detective novel with a twist.' (Introduction)

'While I was reading Josephine Wilson's novel Extinctions, the thought that occurred to me most frequently was, "Why did I not hear of and read this book sooner?" Despite escaping my notice for the past two years, it did not go unrecognized in its country of publication: the book won the inaugural Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript as well as the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award for 2017, and it is easy to understand why. This book is as  humorous as it is profound and as original as it is successful.' (Introduction)

'From the outset—indeed, from the cover of the book, in the form of a louche, evocative Tasmanian wolf howling along to a bowed lyre—Kevin Densley's latest collection strikes a careful balance: meditations on the complexities (and failings) of popular culture; prickings of high art's bubble of self-satisfaction, with occasional swipes at academic indulgence of the same; and explorations of the folkways of Australian life, with particular emphasis on its seedier historical aspects, from horse racing to bare-knuckle brawling and protracted bushranger shenanigans. As with every polished collection, the poems are arranged with careful attention to transition and the patterning of mood, and they do not fall into readily identifiable blocks but work to maintain this thematic balance. We are welcomed to the worlds of "low" and "high" culture, as well as the vibrant folk history of the continent, and invited to appreciate how this shifting mixture works to create what we know as Australia.' (Introduction)

'While traversing the longtime friendship shared between the poets as well as the land they both inhabit, the experience I had while reading the coauthored book Renga: 100 Poems, by John Kinsella and Paul Kane is a truly unique one because of their willingness to try an innovative project with the traditional Japanese form of renga as the driving force. To continue a call-and-response between two people in the form of renga over the span of ten years is quite bold and also a challenge, considering that traditionally the poems are written in one sitting, usually during a gathering, by more than two people—essentially renga was a party game. Here, however, solitude seems to be at the center of most of these poems, in which the observation turns inward.' (Introduction)

'My first encounter with Stephen Oliver was to see and hear him reading his poems at the Sandringham Hotel at the then-grungy lower end of King Street, Newtown in the late 1980s. It was a Saturday afternoon, on a stage usually occupied by bands, and he was in his element as he engaged with the punters, giving as good as he received from them. This was no "Poets in the Park" gig, no audience of "peers" politely responding to one of their own. He, along with Vicki Viidikas, was reading to what most of the then poets around town in Sydney may have disparagingly referred to as swine before which their pearls were not to be spread. They were both relishing the incongruous situation as they were reading their work to a hostile or at least an unappreciative audience.' (Introduction)