'When I was sixteen, I was one of those students who were constantly kind of ill. I thought I was probably a bit of a subconscious hypochondriac (or lazy), but it turned out it was something a little more serious than that.' (Publication abstract)
(Publication abstract)
'Marek learned many things from The Sweeny Brothers' Circus. He'd learned that people will believe anything if you advertise it with enough conviction. That if a tent is not completely dry when you fold it up, it will never smell the same. That animals produce astounding amounts of excrement when startled, and that animals on speeding trains are almost constantly startled. That under moonlight and clear water, white hair looks like polished silver...' (Publication abstract)
'You would recognise the sound. It clatters up the rollercoaster double helix of ancestral memory. The sound is a clinking, like chess pieces in a bag.' (Publication abstract)
(Publication abstract)
'In the politics of the playground, children have the capacity to reject their peers based on the most ridiculous factors. Clothing, music taste, the contents of their lunchbox. This is often tolerated to an extent because we assumed that they would grow out of it. However, even now as a university student, I am unfortunately acutely aware that there are still plenty of judgmental people in the world. Because of this, I cringe every time a classmate gets up at the beginning of a lecture to plug whichever organisation they volunteer for. They always pass around a sign-up sheet. I can't help but feel slightly embarrassed as they retrieve it at the end, only to find that not a single student has written down their contact details. You've got to have serious balls to go back and do another presentation after something like that. Once, I saw the same girl give the same spiel three times in three different lectures. This was in a single week. She was engaging enough, and from memory it was a good cause that she was spruiking. Three lectures. Not a single sign-up.' (Publication abstract)
'Sometimes you just need a body, any body to lie with you through the night. An occasional necessity - like a cheeky joint or family-size Cadbury block. That's why I first led Jake back to my flat at 2 am...' (Publication abstract)
'There once was a frog that could convert its stomach into a uterus. This speckled brown frog appeared quite unremarkable upon first discovery in the seventies, preferring to reside in the hinterland of south-east Queensland than the hustle and bustle of the city, like its more charismatic cousin the green tree frog. But what this frog lacked in appearance it made up for in gross ingenuity. Rather than leaving its offspring to their fate in a pond, the gastric-brooding frog would physiologically convert its stomach into a uterus, swallow its eggs then spit out its young once they had hatched. Now that's dedication.' (Publication abstract)
'Nanna's story about being abandoned by her father begins simply. In the late 1930s, great-grandfather left his Glenelg house to buy a packet of cigarettes. He wasn't seen again until 1942 in Sydney Harbour, fresh off a ship from North Africa with a captain's rank and a new name. She then shows me a photograph of him standing alongside a troopship in port, and another on reconnaissance dated a year earlier, both photographs with his alias pencilled on the back. The photographs aren't particularly interesting or even mysterious; he looks just like any other man who went to war - that old-school part in the hair, that Don Draper nonchalance. What's interesting is Nanna's reaction to what these photographs represent.' (Publication abstract)
(Publication abstract)
'Voiceworks endeavours to provide a mouthpiece for young creators across Australia, an aim it definitely achieves in this issue.'
'Voiceworks endeavours to provide a mouthpiece for young creators across Australia, an aim it definitely achieves in this issue.'