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'He’s tall. Slight. Last buzz-cut grown just long enough to make his dead-straight dirty blond tuft. Skinny-fit jeans. But it’s the T-shirt that catches my eye: dark background, brightly emblazoned with the word “Rastafari” all in capitals. I’m looking at the T-shirt. He’s looking at me, looking at the T-shirt. If we’d met before, I’d have jokingly got my patois on. Cha, white bwoy tink im is tru-big Rastafari, huh? But I don’t. I just look. “Hi, I’m Jeff,” he says. “I’m chairing the panel today.”' (Introduction)
'Following her experience of postnatal depression, writer Jessica Friedmann hopes to provoke discussion of parenthood beyond the clichés of gushing Instagram accounts or nappy-change horror stories. By Donna Lu.'
'Bloodlines follows two Australian women as they make new lives for themselves in unfamiliar places. In modern-day Fremantle, 31-year-old Beth decides to travel to Papua New Guinea. Something has gone wrong for Beth in her life with boyfriend Sam – the reader does not find out what until late in proceedings – and at her father’s behest she takes a job with her aunt at her PNG missionary school. Meanwhile, 35 years earlier, another young woman, Rose, answers a classified and travels from Perth to a remote sheep station to start work as a cook. Rose, we know from the beginning, is Beth’s mother, and these parallel, intergenerational stories offer Sinclair the opportunity to contrast the two women’s characters and choices.' (Introduction)
