AustLit

'Amy Elwood, a Wangkumara/Adnyamathanha Elder and cultural repository of knowledge and grandmother to one of us (Lorina Barker), has inspired an array of creative works about her experience of removal from Country.' (Introduction)

'Marlo, a gay love story set in 1950s conservative Australia, draws on library and archival research. We know this because at the end of his book, author Jay Carmichael – a gay man himself – cites the work of Denis Altman and myself (in my role as a gay historian), among others. The novel is illustrated with photographs from collections in the State Library of Victoria and the Australian Queer Archives.' (Introduction)   

'It’s one of those circle of life kind of things, the antagonist Hopper says in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, explaining how his gang of marauding grasshoppers exploit the ants with a dry cynicism that Luke Carman might appreciate. It wasn’t until I reached the final story in Carman’s collection An Ordinary Ecstasy that this phrase came to mind, as the structure of the book resolved itself into an Ouroboros: the snake biting its own tail that represents, well, the cycle of destruction and birth.' (Introduction)