Cirrus@Austlit

'KATE GRENVILLE tells how her grandmother Dolly - the subject of her new book - railed against society’s shackles at the turn of the 20th century Grandmothers are supposed to be cosy creatures, all scones and big warm hugs. Mine wasn’t – she was cranky, frowning, scary. My mother’s stories portrayed Grandma as an unloving bully. “Why did my mother never love me?” Mum would ask, and I had no answers.' (Introduction)   

'A new series set in Tasmania gives its characters an edge of humour to negotiate its troubling darkness ‘The island’s landscapes had a troubling strangeness, if you looked beyond the stage sets we had erected,” Tasmanian novelist Christopher Koch wrote of his homeland. “And beyond Port Davey’s last little lights of settlement, in the extreme southwest all normality ended.” This is the setting for the ABC’s new drama Bay of Fires, a small, dilapidated township called Mystery Bay, where signs warn of rabies and “Low Level Radiation”, and the hoarding welcoming visitors, if they were ever to unwittingly arrive, has the Mystery crossed out and replaced with the word Misery.' (Introduction)

'Teacher Michael Thomas reflects on the unexpected journey toward publication of his novel When I retired from teaching in 2021, it occurred to me to write a memoir – a recollection of humorous tales from 40 years in the classroom. The one about the time I left 30 students at the swimming pool and wondered where they’d got to, or the time I chased a dugite (a species of venomous, potentially lethal, snake native to Western Australia) from the science lab with a gaggle of screaming children standing on their desks. Not the stuff for a riveting book to be sure.' (Introduction)