Cirrus@Austlit

'By the time you hold this issue of Island, we'll be collating and considering the responses to our first major survey of readers in a number of years. The online survey closes on 1 September 2018 but if you miss this chance to share your views, you're welcome to contact us by email because we value the feedback of our readers and we want to create the magazine you want to read. As former editor Matthew Lamb wrote in Island 142, 'it is readers who close the circuit created by writers and their works, thereby sparking the light of literature. It is readers who turn writers into authors, and their words into essays. into fiction, into poetry'  (Vern Field : Introduction)

'A lonely yowie emerges from the bush to attend the Desperate and Dateless Ball. Mysterious creatures descend from the sky to place a ban on footy. A shark named Bruce turns up in the local swimming pool. A fisherman enjoying a boys’ weekend on the Murray River finds perspective where he least expects it.

'In Shirl, Wayne Marshall takes a range of what-if scenarios to their fabulist and comedic extremes. Superbly inventive and powerful, these fourteen stories skewer contemporary Australian society – particularly the crises of masculinity and national identity – in insightful and yet hilarious ways, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. This astounding collection will make you rethink what it means to be Australian.' (Publication summary)