'Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings Debut Spotlight feature. For February that debut is Gutsy Girls by Josie McSkimming (UQP), an intimate story of sisterhood, finding creative power and blazing your own trail by the sister of renowned poet Dorothy Porter. ' (Introduction)
'‘To speak the name of the dead / is to make them live again.’ This ancient Egyptian wisdom is quoted in Dorothy’s Porter’s first published verse novel Akhenaten (1992). Josie McSkimming, the Australian poet’s youngest sister, begins Gutsy Girls, her memoir about her famous sibling, with this epithet and proceeds to bring her sister back to vivid life by invoking her many names.' (Introduction)
