Cirrus@Austlit

'As the Australian filmmakers who have emerged over the past 15 years have demonstrated, following up an acclaimed debut is an especially devilish task. It makes sense: first films are long in the gestation and done for the love. Afterwards the newly feted director, feeling the pressure to strike while the iron is hot, attaches to an existing, often rickety project that pays well, or dusts off a script from the bottom drawer that should have stayed there.' (Introduction)

'The crumbling monastery that is the setting for Lambs of God, a rich and dexterous new Australian limited series, is many things. At first glance the cliffside 19th-century construction is a refuge for the remnants of Sisters of St Agnes, an enclosed order forgotten by the outside world that has dwindled to just three nuns. But the cloistered, near medieval isolation is also an incubator, revealing what faith can be when a structure evolves without a male hierarchy. When these women invoke the “mother of mercy”, it’s a radical act of spiritual self-sufficiency' (Introduction)

'A common tenet of the short story form is that it has no time to spare, and for this reason a story often commences as far into the action as possible, pushing up close to a single moment of reckoning. For Anton Chekhov this meant throwing away the first half of the story. For Kurt Vonnegut it resulted in a command that one begin as close to the end as possible. Josephine Rowe, in her second collection, Here Until August, tests this rule to marked effect. Instead of commencing near the end of an event, the 10 stories in this collection come as close as they can to a moment of life’s re-beginning, taking the reader up to the precipice of change rather than its culmination.' (Introduction)