AustLit

Last year, as New Australian Fiction 2020 went to print, we were only just beginning to understand the effects COVID-19 would have on Australia and the world at large. Shortly before copies of that anthology arrived in our Melbourne office, Victoria entered what would become an unprecedented 112-day lockdown.

'Now, more than halfway through 2021, civic responses to the pandemic continue to reshape the way we are living across the country. International borders are still closed, with no reopening in sight. We've avoided many of the horrors experienced elsewhere, but our remoteness on the map has never felt more acute. Isolation and loneliness—their literal forms in the shape of lockdowns, travel restrictions, families and friends divided by interstate border closures, as well as the loss of loved ones to the coronavirus and other associated illnesses—have been some of the devastating consequences of this crisis.'  (Introduction)