Cirrus@Austlit

'It's hardly a new observation to say that everything old is new again. Nostalgia in the twenty-first century is not so much a feeling as a cultural force: TV shows and movies are now frequently set in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, offering exaggerated re-creations of the aesthetics that defined those eras (did my parents’ 1980s suburban living room look anywhere near as stylised as those that appear in Stranger Things or Physical?); Instagram accounts churn out memes and anecdotes that epitomise the decades in which their millennial audiences came of age; and, perhaps most confronting of all, my eighteen- year-old niece dresses exactly like the cool kids at my high school did a little more than twenty years ago.' (Introduction)

'Since she began writing in the 1990s, multi award winning Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko has been flipping the script. With grit, defiance and killer one liners, her novels relate the untold stories of Aboriginal Australians living ordinary lives. In the process, her work dismantles lazy stereotypes and exposes the realities of Australia’s colonial legacy.

'Her latest novel, Edenglassie, moves between mid nineteenth century and contemporary Brisbane to interrogate the myths of the past and explore how they’ve shaped our present. In this conversation with Griffith Review Editor Carody Culver – which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity – Melissa reflects on the challenges and possibilities of historical fiction and the writer’s role in helping us understand who we are.' (Introduction) 

'The Mt Buffalo Chalet was shrouded in mist all weekend. One wag quipped it clearly had a seventy-cigarette-a-day habit. The hotel in the high- lands of rural Victoria was crammed to its creaky old rafters with wags and wits that wintery weekend in 1995. It was the venue for the annual Caxton advertising awards. They were run by the newspaper industry to recognise and celebrate the best ads that had appeared in their publications that year.' 

(Introduction)          

'It was more than a decade ago now, but I still have vivid memories of my first Sydney Writers’ Festival. I was in my twenties, and I’d arrived in Sydney as a wide-eyed debut author from the faraway exotic lands of... Queensland. And I was overwhelmed with gratitude, the kind of gratitude every first-time author feels at such an event: I was grateful to be published, grateful to be in the flashy capital of Sydney, and grateful to be programmed out of the hundreds of writers they could have picked instead.' (Introduction)

'Right now, I am obsessed with the past. My debut novel is finished and ready for publication, and I am wrestling with the fear and insecurity that comes with writing a second. To alleviate the anxiety of unknown plot points, unfamiliar characters and structure problems, I’ve sought refuge in the past, in the familiar. I watch and rewatch beloved time-travel movies. I read and re-read dearly loved books that transport me to a previous version of myself. Sometimes I roll my eyes at the person I was. Sometimes I weep. But always I return to the past to understand my present.' (Introduction)           

'Telling a stranger that you are a book editor normally results in one of two responses. Either you’ll be told that editing has deteriorated – whether in the past five or fifty years depends on your interlocutor. Or the charge is that editors intervene too much, their contribution a sort of con job perpetrated on unsuspecting readers. Both responses are characterised as a symptom of the evils of capitalism: either there is no money for proper editing anymore, or books are being smooshed into more marketable boxes. Some claim that there is no proper editing because they’ve found typos or misused words and phrases in contemporary books. Others hold that editorial interventions are extreme and endanger the concept of authorship.' (Introduction)

'Following one of many trips to attend the Mildura Writers Festival, Les Murray penned ‘Asparagus Bones’. Published in 1998, the poem recounts a memorable late-afternoon winter’s drive across the north-western Victorian hinterland in the company of his friend, celebrated restaurateur Stefano de Pieri. As daylight ‘softened into blusher’, they arrived at a farm where his friend let himself in and fetched a box of ‘fossil bones’, asparagus, from a coolroom. The two of them then discussed how unlocked farm doors are ‘emblems of a good society’.' (Introduction)