'Fire, fire burning bright, warm my toes, light my room. Burn my fingers or waft my prayer to heaven.
'Summer in the southern hemisphere is Fire time. Managed fire can be a blessing, clearing out choking undergrowth and removing pestilent rodents. Out of control fire is a different entity altogether. In the summer of 2019/2020 nearly the entire continent of Australia burned. Half a billion animals lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands of acres of habitat and agricultural land was scoured. Some of the fires were human caused. Others were the result of climate change—humanity’s greedy exploitation of resources—and decades of drought.
'Even after the fires are out, the land still suffers.
'From Suzanne Newnham’s strange look at how a person who hears fire perceives the conflagration, to Jack Dann’s and Ann Poore’s evocative poems to tales of wonder and outrage, and Sivlia Brown’s and Narrelle M. Harris’s poignant hopes for a better future, this anthology demonstrates the agony of a continent, but it also shows bits of dark humor and hope among the devastation.
'B-Cubed Press always donates a portion of each sale to charity. For this book that highlights Australian authors and authors with strong ties to the Antipodes, we will donate to WIRES, NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service Inc.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
From the editorial:
As the year turned toward a new decade and new hope for better times, news erupted from Australia. [...]
The animals and habitat devastated by the fires are still there.
Australian authors were also hit hard by the multiple body slams of life interrupted. Book buying fell off.
And so my friends in Australia suggested over closed writer forms that someone create an anthology featuring Australian authors might help [sic] with money and exposure of the plight of their home to the wider world. I have direct access to B-Cubed Press having edited four anthologies and several books for them in three years. [...]
Thus Oz Is Burning was born.
'Residents of a hill-top guesthouse observe the first battle of the Martian invasion and the war machines, which easily dispatch the soldiers sent to battle them. But the tripods are unprepared for the dangers of The Australian bush.'
Source: Foreword.
