Cirrus@Austlit

'800 stories were submitted for consideration this year, many exploring the politics of this decade. After six weeks we decided on a shortlist of ten impressive examples of the contemporary short story, which included this years three finalists.' (Introduction)

'It's pre-dawn, all dark. Breeding season. Elise wakes just before her alarm goes off, skin sharp in the cold air. She tugs the blankets back across her body, curls her knees in and lets herself - for a moment - think of Dan asleep at home in Brisbane, long limbs spidered into all the corners of their bed. In her mind, she sits across from him and kiss-counts the freckles on his shoulder. On his nose. His beard tickles her chin. He exhales warm air through his damp gap mouth and he will never know it, how she runs her hand across his clavicle, sternum, ribs as he sleeps; how she traces the lines of his wrist and hip where the flesh is thinnest, where she might so easily push in.' (Introduction)

'Do you hate how life moulds you and them?

How you adore big-breasted women. Possessed like these retarded emotions, a pixie and a dimple.

Gave them both a tumble. Their scent sticks to your fingers.

You slam into

Your very own imagination. Electric dusk. Sewer overflowing. Streets of muck,

 The cleansing rain.

Ball, you say. Why the hell are you smiling?

There ain't no happy endings

You know how' 

(Introduction)

'When The Lifted Brow announced its prize for experimental nonfiction in late 2014, the fact I wondered what 'experimental' meant was probably a sign I am not very experimental. A bad sign. The literary industry so often valorises experimenting with form, genre and voice as something bold and revolutionary that I felt small and conformist for finding the whole field of 'experimental writing' intimidating, and not knowing how to enter it.' (Introduction)

'When I first decided I was going to be a writer, at around the age of ten, I wanted to be a fantasy writer and a poet. My mother still has my first folder of poems, carefully typed out like a proper book complete with a contents page. My first attempt at a novel was a ham-fisted copy of The Lord of the Rings. i wrote about a hundred pages by hand in my new black fountain pen, which I subsequently threw out as embarrassing juvenilia at the lofty age of fourteen.' (Introduction)

'In Spring of 1972, Overland published a short story by a little-known writer from Bacchus Marsh. Two years later, this story opened Peter Carey's debut collection, The Fat Man in History, which launched his career here and internationally; he has since become that rare Australian literary figure who is both immensely popular and critically respected.' (Introduction)

'Crabs is very neat in everything he does. His movements are almost fussy, but he has so much fight in his delicate frame that they're not fussy at all. Lately he has been eating. When Frank eats one steak, Crab eats two. When Frank has a pint of mil, Crabs drinks two. He spends a lot of time lying on his bed, groaning, because of the food. But he's building up. At night he runs five miles to Clayton. He always means to run back, but he always ends up on the train, hot and sweating and sticking to the seat. His aim is to increase his weight and get a job driving for Allied Panel and Towing. Already he has his licence but he's too small, not tough enough to beat off the competition at a crash scene.' (Introduction)