AustLit
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Latest Issues
Contents
- From the Cloud, single work essay
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The Beasts and the Birthday,
single work
'Nanny’s forever going on and on about what things were like before the march, when there was so much. Whose got carrots enough to throw bits of them away? Mumma and Daddy though, they don’t say a word about it, or the march itself. Neither of them say much at all, really. Me? I wasn’t born before but during, and I don’t remember none of it. Polly says she can recall a few things here and there, flashes of the beasts, the way they sunk their teeth in at the necks and made people into puppets. When she tells me things like that, I’m glad I don’t remember.' (Publication abstract)
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Death and Mildred,
single work
short story
'Mildred was only six when she met Death, but she wasn’t afraid.
'He looked nothing like the pictures. He wasn’t a skeleton in a dark robe or a gaunt figure wielding a shining silver pennant (she hadn’t yet learned the word scythe). Instead he wore a ragged but serviceable coat and carried a leather briefcase, and looked a little bit like her father and grandfather and Mr Makras, the lion-voiced librarian at her school, all rolled into one. If Mildred had ever known her mother, Death might have looked a little something like her too.' (Publication abstract)
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Drift,
single work
short story
'What happened to the ship wasn’t my fault. At least, I don’t think that it was. Things like that are hard to work out in the moment.
'My last clear memory is of working on the exterior, the humans crowded safely inside. They always felt so distant, locked down in the dark with the warmth and oxygen. It was better, out on the hull. Moving quickly and gracefully, all six limbs planting temporary rivets and pulling me along. It’s what I was made for. The humans were shouting at me to move faster, to fix the damage. I didn’t know what had gone wrong with the ship, but that was okay. Fixing things is what I do. They were insulting me, their voices high and thin with panic. So fragile and so strange. (Publication abstract)
-
The Opposite of Romance,
single work
interview
Part one of an entertaining and enlightening interview with Jennifer Fallon.
- Why Human Beings Will Never Colonise Other Planets, single work essay
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Secret History of Australia : Cyrus Handapple,
single work
short story
'Intellectual, freethinker and solipsist, Cyrus Handapple was the youngest in a family of fifteen, born in 1904 and growing up in the Western Australian town of Bunbury.' (Publication abstract)
