Cirrus@Austlit

'I never thought I could write about where I grew up. The texts I was prescribed at school, the poetry, novels, and the reviews of them I saw in the paper didn’t make sense—they had nothing to do with the regional Australia I knew. When I was a teenager, I wrote a short story involving sandy saltwater leaking from my nose onto Dorothy Parker’s collected works after getting smashed in the surf. I remember thinking ‘this isn’t something that a proper “Australian Writer” would write about’. For a long time I thought this was true.' (Holly Isemonger : Editorial introduction)