'The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest story of 2020, causing severe and sudden changes that many people could never have imagined. Our Inside Voices is a collection of creative writing that looks beyond quick journalism or abstract statistics to offer deeper reflection on the cultural and social dimensions of the pandemic.
'Writers reflect on how the disease dramatically shaped our ways of living and dying: the abrupt, sometimes subtle, often challenging, changes brought to cultural, economic, and social aspects of everyday life during a global health emergency. Australians at home and abroad, stunned by a sudden shift in priorities as routine habits and occupations were fundamentally disrupted, faced so many changes that even time seemed inconstant.
'Pandemics are biological events with cultural and social implications. We hope (although, in mid-2020, we don’t yet know) that this virus will soon be managed by curative or preventative technologies, but the disease will have infected and killed millions before it is rendered harmless.
'The voices gathered here are diverse and eloquent, capturing a vivid portrait of the COVID-19 pandemic as it grows towards its initial peak. They also capture various creative ways in which Australians adapt to rapidly changing realities.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Epigraph:
'... it was then that fear, and with fear
serious reflection, began.'
Albert Camus
La Peste (The Plague) 1947
Translation by Stuart Gilbert
