Cirrus@Austlit

'Travelling to St Albans Writers’ Festival, there is a point at which you realise your routine life can be left behind. It’s about the time you’re crossing the Hawkesbury, by the slow pull of the barge through a river lit with sun. Or on arrival at the village, at the stone buildings and blossom trees. There are chickens and kelpies, people and books, children playing hide and seek. Bales of lucerne surround a fire pit, so that writers and readers can merge as one.' (Introduction)

'Harriet McKnight’s debut novel is a rather bleak and dispiriting portrait of two women on the verge of nervous breakdowns, and of a world on the verge of environmental catastrophe.'

'A self-described “lanky, shaggy D-list” celebrity and dandy who strives to be Noël Coward but fears he is Steptoe, Tim Rogers, lead singer of You Am I, reveals that these days the “swagger” in his walk comes from two knee reconstructions. “This is who I am, take it or leave it. A middle-aged man without much more going on than a deep thirst.”' (Introduction)