Cirrus@Austlit

'War is readily characterised as a failure of reason. But that’s not quite true. It is, in fact, a failure to hear reason. The recent loss of Graham Freudenberg – Australia’s greatest speechwriter – compels us once again to listen. We owe him that.' (Introduction)

'The Sydney-born playwright Oriel Gray didn’t particularly like journalists but enjoyed journalists’ banter and their constant search for a scoop. When her ABC reporter partner, John Hepworth, joined the Canberra press gallery prior to the 1949 federal election that ousted her beloved prime minister Ben Chifley, Gray discovered journos went to lots of great parties. “Your head spun from unbelievably believable gossip, suppositions and innuendos both political and sexual, as much as it did from the variegated liquor,” she marvelled decades later.' (Introduction)

'Mother of Pearl tells the story of a surrogacy from the perspectives of three different women. Meg, a married 39-year-old jeweller from Melbourne, is desperate for a child. Years of IVF treatments have left her bereft, her grief like “a wild animal in a cage”. It’s 2008, the eighth year of south-eastern Australia’s worst drought, and even her once-lush garden is barren, its lawn “straw”, the “ferns like brown bones”.' (Introduction)

'In 2014 the writer Stephanie Wood returned to what she calls the badlands of online dating. She ended up exchanging emails with “Joe”, who seemed gentle, uncomplicated and only a little bit of a dag. The emails developed into a date and then a romance that showed every sign of being love.' (Introduction)