'In 1922, when Katharine Susannah Prichard’s son, Ric, was born, she had him placed in what she called his Bolshevik gown, ‘the little gown I had embroidered with wheat ears and a hammer and sickle.’ It’s a cute story, but also a prescient gesture towards Prichard’s decades-long, unwavering loyalty to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Prichard’s writing, Nathan Hobby’s biography reveals, was matched in intensity by her political activities. With these two pillars of interests set alongside each other in detailed accounts of her literary habits (in her early career she was a frequent submitter to writing prizes), and later her political organising (setting up CPA branches, travelling the country to give rousing speeches about the fight for communism in Australia), we see the broader picture emerge of a woman who was intensely engaged with her world, and with a seemingly unstoppable energy to pour back into it. Her prolific writing practice only seemed to be interrupted when her party duties took over. Even towards the end of her life, she reignited a writing habit: two hours per day. Prichard remained active in her political party until late into life and, even towards the end, living as an elderly eccentric, she managed to hold court, frequently hosting friends and visitors. There is a felt sense, in this biography, of her boundless energy.' (Introduction)
'There’s something stimulating about seeing into other people’s houses. We’ve all glanced through an open window or door as we pass by on our walks. Seen the old retriever slumped in the doorway, the clutter, the gaudy furniture, the bad renovations; it’s always just a quick glance. It’s no surprise but still uncanny that we live so close together, on top of each other, separated by thin walls and floors, and yet, what goes on in the interiors of our fellow suburbanites’ houses remains mostly a secret. Imagine you were a working-class mother who regularly cleaned these houses. What stories would you tell yourself about the inhabitants as you fluffed up their cushions and scrubbed at their skid marks?' (Introduction)
'What do people think they’re doing when they’re writing novels? I’ve never found an answer that feels completely satisfying. When writers invoke the value of stories – we’re all storytellers, us humans – I catch the whiff of a strategy to reduce one’s threat level, otherwise the predominance of this idea would be absurd on its face: as if anybody thinks when they’re opening a novel that the story is the main thing happening.' (Introduction)
'When it comes to access, everyone is becoming ~Radical~ these days. I’ve noticed.'
'In this iterative writing and walking project, we have been making space to ask questions of each other about caring for Country, to share conversations about climate change, and to remind ourselves of the love that keeps us present. We start with an anecdote, usually shared while walking together on Gadigal/Bidgigal Land along the Cooks River; we live on either side of the river and have been walking together for many years. We take turns both to propose prompts for writing and directions for our walks responding to what we’ve encountered- mangroves, casuarinas, or for this essay, dingoes. Our walks in the catchment have also included following Papaya, Banana and Dragonfruit Trees through Marrickville and rowing and walking the river.' (Introduction)
'Early on in Sally Olds’ debut essay collection I’m immersed in a familiar world:
It was a Friday night and I was drunk outside a nightclub in Melbourne called Hugs and Kisses, sometime in early 2018. I wondered aloud about the building – a two storey red brick warehouse that looked industrial, or pre-gentrification industrial, given that ‘industrial’ usually refers to post-industrial buildings retrofitted with industrial chic (open spaces, washed concrete, bare bulbs).
(Introduction)
'Diana Reid resists an easy delivery of certainties in her debut novel Love and Virtue. Tracking the fallout from an incident that may or may not have been sexual assault, Reid avoids didacticism as she examines power, agency and class privilege at a Sydney university and issues a provocation to the reader: discern for yourself, as narrator Michaela must, ‘the distinction between being hurt and being wronged’.' (Introduction)
