The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Blood, Salt, and Fish Guts Vince Ruston , 2020 single work short story
— Appears in: The Suburban Review , September no. 19 2020;
1 Drag Me (Away from My Phone) Vince Ruston , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Voiceworks , Winter no. 112 2018; (p. 6-7)

'Literally what isn't a drag right now? Trump is president of the US; refugees are being held captive in trauma-inducing prisons off-shore; the Great Barrier Reef is dying; and Neo-Nazis are making a comeback nobody wanted. Just to name a few of the issues I feel upset about within the first ten minutes of my morning. Before I've even properly woken up, I open my digital, blue-screen newspaper (Facebook and Twitter) to absorb the horrors of the day. Almost everyone else is doing this too, from the looks of my Feed. I started doing it in hopes that the exposure to blue light would help wake my serotonin-deficient brain up, but I'm pretty sure it's just making me more depressed. I'm not sure if I'd admire or be extremely cautious of anyone who didn't feel as though their soul was being dragged across hot coals in this political climate.' (Introduction)
1 The Poem as a Body (A Cento) i "How to read the poem:", Vince Ruston , 2015 single work poetry
— Appears in: Voiceworks , Summer no. 102 2015-2016; (p. 97-99)
1 Eggshells i "We laugh about the time you", Vince Ruston , 2015 single work poetry
— Appears in: Voiceworks , Spring no. 101 2015; (p. 91)
1 Silicosis i "curl around coast,", Vince Ruston , 2015 single work poetry
— Appears in: Voiceworks , Winter no. 100 2015; (p. 96-97)
1 Abattoir i "I am painted red. The stain reeks", Vince Ruston , 2014 single work poetry
— Appears in: Voiceworks , Summer no. 99 2014; (p. 21)
1 Art Does Not Imitate Life Vince Ruston , 2014 single work essay
— Appears in: Voiceworks , Summer no. 99 2014; (p. 6-7) 'As a writer, I find it increasingly difficult to be able to separate myself from my work; as a poet, even more. My anxiety runs through my poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and a lot of the time it even drives it. Roland Barthes writes about ‘the death of the author’ — the idea that once a piece of writing is written, it becomes its own thing, separate from the writer and the writer’s biography. It exists as art, in a kind of art-vacuum. It’s something I wish I could do sometimes — not let my anxiety affect my writing as though they are welded together. But it’s certainly something I’ve gotten better at since editing for Voiceworks; editing others’ work and my own allows me an objective space from which I can read pieces, and think about how I can make it better.' 

 (Introduction)
X