AustLit

'Australian poet, dancer, actor and filmmaker, Richard James Allen’s most recent work transports the reader through a disorienting and disturbing but also fascinating afterlife encounter.'  (Introduction)

'Tasmanian poet Esther Ottaway’s latest collection is brave, experimental and brimming with power and artistry. Her poems reveal the truth of her own autistic experience but also the embodied experiences of a multitude of undiagnosed women and girls who are neurodivergent.'  (Introduction)

'Beth Spencer’s most recent publication, The Age of Fibs, is a montage of stories, memoir and microlit that, if you’re a reader like me, will surprise, amuse and hold you until the last page is turned. Spencer, a seasoned writer of poetry, short stories, novels and academic works (most recently Vagabondage in 2015 which was poetry, microlit and travelogue) readily admits that this blend of pieces—many published previously in other contexts— derives its power and connection through ‘the energy of crossover’.' (Publication summary)

'Our Ways on Earth is Peter Bakowski’s eighth full collection of poems—wise, wistful and idiosynchratic in equal parts. Bakowski has been writing poetry for forty years and is delightfully described in the author biography at the back of the book as ‘a bounding deer in the long grass of poetry’ [73]. With disarming simplicity, these poems carry us in an uninterrupted stream through a gallery of human and non-human portraits, occasionally breaking for playfulness with quirkier poems about what poetry is, or that rely on strings of brightly imaged metaphors, or haiku and one- or two-line dryly humorous poems.' (Publication summary)   

'It’s All Connected: Feminist Fiction and Poetry brings together the creative work of 39 Australian writers to mark the beginning of the fourth decade of eminent feminist press, Spinifex Press, publishing women’s stories. The book is a companion volume to Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion and Women’s Liberation (2021) edited by Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne.' (Introduction)

'Ghosts Struggle to Swim revisits and reimagines distant and recent pasts and their people. It explores how memories are made and kept, daily rituals, art and water in all its forms.

'“Jane Frank’s poems take us into moments which are at once familiar and strange: tapestries and installations of her family and her world. At turns wise and wistful, these poems are snapshots of art, philosophy, landscape and memory. A beautiful and overdue first collection of poetry.”

'Damen O’Brien'(Publication summary)

'Critical State is Brett Dionysius’ ninth full poetry collection, and encapsulates work spanning the past decade in order to celebrate the extraordinary diversity of species in his home state of Queensland but also warn of the biodiversity loss resulting from human action that ‘raises awareness about the increasing effects of the Anthropocene.’ The title Critical State has a menacing double entendre.' (Introduction)