Cirrus@Austlit

'Over the last decade cultural policy-makers have dramatically tested the Australian literary sector. In addition to the challenges and opportunities posed by digital disruption, and the ongoing uncertainty around the Covid pandemic, cultural policy in Australia has been out in the cold for the best part of a decade. Which is to say: there is no cultural policy, really. During the last ten years advocacy for local books and writing has been everything from organised and passionate to reactive, emotive and haphazard. In the face of the ongoing challenges facing our sector now, how might we open a broad and accessible discussion about the public value of local books and writing? And what effect, if any, might such a discussion be expected to have on the future of Australian literature?' (Introduction)

'In A Body of Water (1990), Beverley Farmer chronicles her thoughts on how to reshape her work in favour of a more personal expression. Her early writing now feels foreign to her: ‘Assuming that I want to go on writing the conventional sort of fiction that I have been. Why do I assume that?’ By that stage, she had written three collections of short stories – Snake (1982), Milk (1983), and Home Time (1985) – none ‘conventional’ in any strict sense of the word – and a novella, Alone, which she completed in the late 1960s and was published in 1980.' (Introduction)

'Last year, Craig Silvey’s third novel was published, his first since the hugely popular Jasper Jones in 2009. Honeybee, a story about a troubled trans teenager, Sam, and their unlikely friendship with the older widower Vic was considered, on publication, to be fairly offensive by many trans readers, myself included. Offensive because it is a cis man writing a trans teenager with all the predictable tropes: a troubled home life, suicide attempts, ambiguous language that evades gender until a big ‘reveal’. I watched the book come out, I watched it sell well, and I watched as not one reviewer engaged with it as a literary critic. No one considered it worthy of literary criticism, seemingly on the basis of its relationship to transness. I hate being a trans person when a book like this comes out, not because I feel unsettled in my identity, but because I hate being treated like I’m too fragile to understand the stakes of fiction by critics who aren’t assessing it as such.' (Introduction)