Cirrus@Austlit

'It’s an achievement to write about the climate crisis – and the resulting increase in Australian firestorms – without having people turn away to avoid their mounting ecological unease. Despite experiencing the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 directly, I too am guilty of looking away. It’s easier that way. Danielle Celermajer, however, excels at both holding our attention and holding us to account, balancing the horror and hope of not-so-natural disasters, specifically extreme Australian bushfires, in her new book of narrative non-fiction, Summertime.' (Introduction)

'This essay is a 2020 collaboration between award-winning Barkindji poet and novelist Paul Collis and short story writer and essayist Alice Bishop, who has British background. Collis and Bishop became friends at the May 2019 Northern Territory Writers’ Festival and have been talking about writing, landscape, loss—and country music—ever since.'  (Introduction)

'Rome 1926. The Honourable Violet Gibson tries to assassinate Benito Mussolini. She misses. Mussolini puts a bandage on his nose and carries on with his plans for dictatorship.  

'Another 2 inches to the right and Violet would have changed the entire sweep of world history.  

'Saint, subversive, prophet or madwoman? I Shot Mussolini is the story of an eccentric Irish woman who wanted to kill Mussolini and the Italian policeman who wanted to find out why.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'Before the bushfires -- before the front of flames comes roaring over the hills -- the ridges are thick with gums.

'After the fires, the birds have gone. There is only grey ash and melted metal, the blackened husks of cars.

'And the lost people -- in temporary accommodation on the outskirts of the city, on the TV news in borrowed clothes, or remembered in flyers on a cafe wall.

'A Constant Hum grapples with the aftermath of disaster with an eye for telling detail. Some of these stories cut to the bone; others are empathetic stories of survival, even hope. All are gripping and beautifully written, heralding the arrival of an important new voice in literary fiction.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'About three months after Black Saturday dad and I drove up to the place where our house used to be. Anything left (and there wasn’t much) was still bushfire blackened or, if not, the dark colours of rained-on rust. The forgotten wrecks of a couple of our neighbours’ cars and burnt-out back-yard sheds lay untouched—dotted like abandoned cicada cases across the ridge. The only green was in the still-standing gums’ trunk bases, sprouting clusters of seemingly out-of-place leaves.'  (Introduction)