AustLit

'When Anna, a pianist and perfectionist, falls pregnant with her first child, her excitement is tempered by the daunting journey ahead. She shares the dizzying wonder and crippling anxiety that comes with creating new life. Should she indulge her craving for sausage after sixteen years of not eating meat? Will her birth plan involve Enya or hypnosis, or neither? And just how worried should she be about her baby falling into a composting toilet?

'Anna Goldsworthy has turned her captivating memoir into a captivating play which combines warmth, humour and surprise to reveal the love that binds families together.

'This world premiere production evokes the shock of plunging into a life-changing adventure and the kicking required to return to the surface.

'With live songs and a soon-to-be-announced star of the stage in the role of Anna, this charming but delightfully affecting and hilarious account of pregnancy and early motherhood melds Up the Duff candour with Lena Dunham-like wit, and will have you laughing, sighing and crying in recognition.'

Source: State Theatre Company of South Australia.

'IN HIS NEW BOOK, Fugitive, the Australian pianist Simon Tedeschi describes the many faces of the child prodigy:

To his public, the child prodigy is a robot or a God.

To his rivals, he is a false prophet.

To his rivals’ teachers and parents, he is a demon.

To his society, he is a symbol.

But to himself, he is simply a ghost.

(Introduction)

'The spirit of the festive season will shine brightly in a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge, the Ghosts of Christmas’ Past, Present, and Yet to Come, as well as Tiny Tim and the Cratchit Family, are transported from 19th century London to contemporary Melbourne in a sparkling reimagination of this timeless tale.

'Composer Graeme Koehne (Love Burns) and writer Anna Goldsworthy (The Magic Pudding – The Opera) realise Dickens’ story about the importance of love, compassion and generosity as a new Australian opera for us all.'

Source: Victorian Opera.

'It is 1941. Eighteen-year-old Ruby leaves behind the family farm, her serious mother and roguish father, and heads for Adelaide. After a brief courtship, she enters into a hasty marriage with a soldier about to go to war – who returns a changed man.

'In this absorbing novel, Anna Goldsworthy recreates the world of Adelaide half a century ago, and portrays the phases of a woman’s life with intimacy and sly humour. We follow Ruby as she contends with her damaged husband and eccentric in-laws. We see her experience motherhood and changing social circumstances, until, in a moving twist, a figure from the past reappears, to kindle a late-life romance.

'Footsteps thunder down the passage and the bedroom door is flung open. I hold up one side of the doona. There are good aspects to this: a sleek back snuggles into me; a downy nape is lodged against my nose. There are also bad aspects.' (Introduction)

'The Best Australian Essays showcase the nation’s most eloquent, insightful and urgent non-fiction writing. In her first time as editor, award-winning author Anna Goldsworthy chooses brilliant pieces that provoke, unveil, engage and enlighten, and get to the heart of what’s really happening in Australia and the world.' (Publication summary)

'You are fluid, composed of smoke or air, morphing between ectoplasm and skeleton. It is a dance, a cosmic strip show: a flash of spine, and then a rib cage, clean as a fish. Who is laying these bones down, bit by bit? Is it me who is making you, or are you making yourself?' When Anna Goldsworthy, pianist and perfectionist, falls pregnant with her first child, her excitement is tempered by the daunting journey ahead.

'In Welcome to Your New Life, she shares the dizzying wonder and crippling anxiety that come with creating new life. Should she indulge her craving for cevapcici sausage after sixteen years of not eating meat? Will her birth plan involve Enya or hypnosis, or neither? And just how worried should she be about her baby falling into a composting toilet?

'Goldsworthy's elegant prose has the charm of Sloane Crosley's writing (I Was Told There'd Be Cake), while her reflections on motherhood are every bit as frank as Rachel Cusk's (A Life's Work). Welcome to Your New Life disarmingly captures the shock of plunging into a life-changing adventure and the kicking required to return to the surface.' (Publication summary)