Cirrus@Austlit

'Through his one-man show Since Ali Died, Omar Musa has connected with audiences who have experienced ostracism. The rapper, novelist and poet speaks about the power of storytelling and the need for greater nuance in depictions of the Muslim community. “People come up to me after the show. Firstly, there are people really interested in having direct access to a young Muslim man growing up post-9/11. And then, secondly, there are those who relate to the outsider experience. I talk about a very specific intersection of race and religion – but try to make it relatable to all people who might feel a bit different.” ' (Introduction)

'Elliot Perlman’s new novel, Maybe the Horse Will Talk, centres on a fable that the protagonist, one Stephen Maserov, tells his sons. In the story a tyrannical king decides he no longer finds his jester funny. Realising his life is at risk, the jester offers the king a compromise. Give me a year and your best horse, he says, and I will show you something extraordinary. I will teach the horse to talk.' (Introduction)

'The myth of Helen Garner’s diaries is immense. When she published Monkey Grip 40-odd years ago, with its riveting depiction of emotional and drug squalors in inner-urban Melbourne, she evoked a world that had never been written about before. But the novel’s heartbreaks and contentments, with its central portrait of Javo the junkie, were accused of being just diaries rehashed as fiction. The alternative view of the Garner diaries is that they constitute her major life’s work: that when they saw the light of day – presumably, people thought, after her death – they would be acknowledged as one of the great journals of lived experience, up there with Pepys and Gide.' (Introduction)