Cirrus@Austlit

'The American writer on the festival circuit had refined his message into this decade’s preferred mode of communication: a list. He identified five points. Just as five is a useful number for a child using her fingers to learn to count, it is handy for the busy writer-slash-performer. His points demonstrated he’d reflected on his craft, but his thoughts could be distilled into one: if you want to be a writer, get on with it – or, in the jargon of another brand, just do it.' (Publication abstract)

' Her ceilings are soft with cobwebs. Her garden is choked with weeds. Her fence leans, like buckteeth, out onto the footpath. She is getting old, and noisy. Like me, with my snorts and grunts and farts that catch even me by surprise. Her doors creak, her heating claps itself to life, and her pipes splutter up their rusty sputum...'

'Saul turns off the bitumen onto the dirt road and drives due west. The ute rattles along over the corrugated track; its tyres rumble over cattle grids between immense pastures. The land before him flat and featureless; everything - the rocks, sand and thin scrub - leached pale by the sun. The sky cobalt but for a distant spittle of cloud to the south. Behind him, miniscule against the sky, a range of hills and a line of electricity pylons. He crests a rim where it seems the whole country suddenly drops away before him, so vast and flat and desolate he is overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo. A nothingness out there terrifying in its extent. And as he drives down into that nothingness, he knows his search has ended.' (Introduction)

'He insists on a hotel room. You want him to stay with your family - you, Graeme and daughters, Sal and Janie. I want you to stay with your sisters. You almost say this on the phone but change it to half-sisters in your head and that doesn't sound right either so you banish it to the place in your brain that overflows with unspoken things... ' (Introduction)

'William Dutton was still walking towards school. Two decades after he'd finished, still. Carrying his guitar, head down, mumbling to himself, resenting that he had to go, waste another day, fill in shitty little forms that he always got wrong, screwed up, started again, or forgot to attach, eliciting a reminder email. He didn't even like schools, but where else could a guitar teacher get work? He didn't like how the bell was the same bell as in the '70s - loud, metallic, unable to compromise, still cutting days into geography-sized pieces, unwilling to allow sunshine, Ginsberg's hipster funk or fun. Fun. Fancy that. And the way teachers stood in hallways discussing assessment criteria and performance standards, like the boys were goats to be fattened to fetch the best price at the abattoir. He hated his pigeonhole, because it never contained anything he was interested in, just more work, more shit to fill in, more complaints from parents. And he hated them too. Why couldn't they just teach their own kids, or feed them, take them to sport, imbue manners? Yes, manners. They had to be 'imbued'. He couldn't understand what people talked about in staff meetings. What did it matter if socks were worn below the knee? Or if no one had completed their sixty hours of professional development? What was professional development? How to make an effective rubric? Rubrics. Fuck. More shit, less interest than 'Mein Kampf' - although at least that started a war...' (Introduction)

Cory Taylor, Who passed away in July, was a joy to work with. Over the years I was her editor at Text, we became close friends. This extract in Griffith Review, a literary magazine much admired by Cory, is from The White Experiment, the third novel she was working on after her extraordinary Me and Mr Booker (Text, 2012) and My Beautiful Enemy (Text, 2013).

'Melanie Cheng is a Melbourne-based writer and practising GP. ‘Muse’, published in Griffith Review 54: Earthly Delights, is part of a collection of short fiction, Australia Day, which was awarded the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. In this interview, Cheng explains how her novella fits within the Australia Day manuscript and discusses the central of role of empathy in her work as both a doctor and a writer.' (Publication abstract)

'Graham Lang is an artist and writer who has published three novels: Clouds Like Black Dogs (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2003), Place of Birth (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2006) and Lettah’s Gift (UQP, 2011). His novella ‘A Fulcrum of Infinities’, published in Griffith Review 54: Earthly Delights, bears the same name as his most recent body of visual work. In this interview, Lang discusses the 'thrilling potential of both written and visual work, and reveals how the novella was profoundly informed by his own brush with death.' (Publication abstract)

'Daniel Jenkins grew up in New South Wales. He has spent most of the past ten years living in Asia and the Middle East, teaching and writing. His novella ‘Those Boys From Jalaan’ is set in a Middle Eastern country and focuses on the mixed experiences of a woman who arrives to teach English to college students, and that of her predecessor in the apartment she occupies. In this interview, he discusses how his writing has influenced his choice of destinations, and the challenges of writing from a female perspective.' (Publication abstract)

'Suzanne McCourt’s first novel The Lost Child (Text, 2014) was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2015. Her novella ‘The Last Taboo: A Love Story’, published in Griffith Review 54: Earthly Delights, is a confronting story about the fraught relationship that develops between a mother and son reunited in later life after she gave him up for adoption as a teenager. In this interview, she discusses her lengthy struggle to win the confidence to become a writer, and the importance of enchantment in her creative work.' (Publication abstract)

'Based in Adelaide, Stephen Orr has published several novels, and has been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and twice for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His novella ‘Datsunland’ explores the hesitant bond that develops between a reluctant music teacher and his teenage student in a school they both loathe. In this interview, he discusses his own experiences of teaching, and how growing up in ’70s suburbia informed his writing.' (Publication abstract)