AustLit

'In sparkling prose, Sonja Dechian’s profound, moving and wry stories speak to our deepest yearning for connection and the inevitability of our isolation.

'From a terrorist cell of cyber-bullying victims working to annihilate the digital memory of their humiliation to a pandemic that leaves grieving parents battling for the media spotlight, these affecting tales invite us to examine our inability to control the world around us—and our own desires.

'An Astronaut’s Life is a beautiful debut from an intelligent new voice in Australian writing.' (Publication summary)

'These stories were collected through two nationwide writing competitions in 2002 and 2004 by Australians Against Racism Inc, a creative grassroots human rights and social justice organisation that was formed in 2001. Both competitions asked young people to use an interview or direct personal experience of displacement as their starting point, and then left them free to choose whether to write their story as fiction or essay. [...]

'Following the competition in 2002, we edited the hugely successful anthology Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories by Young Writers Aged 11-20 Years [...]. No Place Like Home is both the second anthology in what we hope will be a series, and unique. [...]

'This volume includes stories of hatred and tolerance; rejection and love; acceptance and alienation; war, aftermath and resolution; fear and hope; great suffering and great heroism; small journeys and unimaginably huge journeys' (pp. 1 & 2).

'Dark Dreams: Australian refugee stories is a unique anthology of essays, interviews, and stories written by children and young adults. The stories are the finest of hundreds collected through a nationwide schools competition in 2002. The essays and stories represent many different countries and themes. Some focus on survival, some on horrors, some on the experiences and alienation of a new world. This book will have a a key role to play in schools across Australia. Eva Sallis's first novel Hiam won The Australian Vogel and the Dobbie Literary Awards. She is co-founder of Australians Against Racism and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide. 'Stories to melt the hardest heart.' - Helen Garner 'We have not been allowed to know the (recent) refugees as human beings ...These stories change all that and force a personal response from the reader.' - Phillip Adams' (Publication summary)