'Drawing on Alexis Wright’s interviews and essays on the creative writing process, this article gives insight into how the Waanyi novelist conceived Carpentaria (2006) and the philosophy she holds for literature and storytelling. In the first two sections, notions of truth, modal thought, reference, simulation, imagination and reality will be discussed in relation to Lubomír Doležel’s propounded theory of possible worlds. Literary theory, the philosophy of fiction and cognitive literary studies are the three main areas that will be investigated to probe the storytelling dynamics of imagination and reality. In the last section, we will bring to the fore the ways in which novel-writing is for Alexis Wright an exercise in gap-filling, one that brings the silenced details out of the shadows.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This article examines how Aboriginal conceptions of time and space in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and Janette Turner Hospital’s Oyster affect representations of personal, cultural and ecological trauma through privileging sites of wounding that embody Country. The four elements of air, water, earth and fire are central to understanding how each text navigates the complex relational matrices of Aboriginal traumas and respond to ongoing issues of genocide and dispossession that are part of Australia’s tragic history. Elemental energies in these novels are connected to powerful spaces that pain inhabits and moves through, providing insights into the significance of their engagement with Aboriginality and trauma, particularly when situated within the context of legislature including the Native Title Act of 1993 and the Wik decision of 1996. Elemental motifs perform a cyclical function that begins with deep connectedness to oceanic imagery in Carpentaria, then transitions to trauma inflicted on Country and culminates in a cathartic watery Armageddon. While Oyster’s consideration of elemental traumatic space is primarily attributed to land, cartography and wounded bodies, the novel’s narrative threads reach a similar apocalyptic denouement. Oyster’s cataclysmic fires of destruction are eclipsed by the regenerative potencies of water that rejuvenate Country and supplant horror with beauty.' (Publication abstract) 

'At various points in their (post)colonial histories, the border-protective politics of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand have mobilized off-shore islands as spaces of “inclusive exclusion”. Yet, even as spaces of exception and/or exclusion, off-shore islands dismantle inside/outside distinctions. I discuss a selection of Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand novels featuring both literal and metaphorical islands used for removal, internment or containment of Indigenous peoples and wartime “enemy aliens”. Through their attention to the poetics of island form, and coasts as more-than-human spaces, the novels underscore how islands bring the relation between inside and outside into question, complicating the articulation of borders.'  (Publication abstract)