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y separately published work icon After the Carnage selected work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 After the Carnage
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Ten years after the much-acclaimed Swallow the Air, Tara June Winch returns with an extraordinary new collection of stories'

'A single mother resorts to extreme measures to protect her young son. A Nigerian student undertakes a United Nations internship in the hope of a better future. A recently divorced man starts a running group with members of an online forum for recovering addicts. '

'Ranging from New York to Istanbul, from Pakistan to Australia, these unforgettable stories chart the distances in their characters’ lives – whether they have grown apart from the ones they love, been displaced from their homeland, or are struggling to reconcile their dreams with reality. A collection of prodigious depth and variety, After the Carnage marks the impressive evolution of one of our finest young writers.' (Source: Publisher's website)

Notes

  • Dedication: for Arnaud
  • Epigraph: They knew nothing of the past and its holiness. –James Salter.

Contents

* Contents derived from the St Lucia, Indooroopilly - St Lucia area, Brisbane - North West, Brisbane, Queensland,:University of Queensland Press , 2016 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Wager, Tara June Winch , single work short story

'By morning someone would die, but at that moment I couldn't have known. The only thing I did know then was that I was feeling overwhelmingly out of place in her bathtub...' (1)

(p. 1-18)
The Last Class, Tara June Winch , single work short story
''Who brought the knife? In fact it wasn't a good idea to have a knife at school.' (19)
(p. 19-33)
After the Carnage, More, Tara June Winch , single work short story
'I look up and I remember a veer of redstarts and house crows, the birds leaving the slip of clear sky, sky rapidly remodelling itself in ash. I'd wondered if it was the first time I'd seen the birds of Lahore from that angle.' (35)
(p. 35-41)
Happy, Tara June Winch , single work short story

'Jules and Tomas weren't a particularly happy couple. They'd traded in their fuller, busier lives in the city a few years prior and had settled in a quiet village on the banks of a picturesque river...' (43)

(p. 43-55)
Failure to Thrive, Tara June Winch , single work short story

'First Day

I knew if I reached the seat first, presented my argument as to why I should be president of the missions committee, they'd just let me have it. I angled my knees toward the far corner of the auditorium.' (57)

(p. 57-72)
Baby Island, Tara June Winch , single work short story
'Guangzhou that September was thirty-six degrees Celsius, thick with humidity. It was a pleasure to arrive in my room, to escape the scent of diesel, camphor burning and onions frying, to catch the edge of a cold front pitched from the air-conditioning.' (73)
(p. 73-85)
Easter, Tara June Winch , single work short story
'When I was younger I felt as if I could feel everything, and afterward I could own those feelings like objects to revisit...' (87)
(p. 87-100)
Meat House, Tara June Winch , single work short story
'In front of the Hagia Sophia the woman's skirt billowed, the pleats of houndstooth becoming momentary jellyfish bell, before the woman ran from the gust, flattening the fabric with her forearms, holding tight her modesty...(101)
(p. 101-111)
It’s Too Difficult to Explain, Tara June Winch , single work short story

'Vincent lay in the light. It fell across the trundle bed in shards the colour of brittle toffee, coming in early and sickly sweet...' (113)

(p. 113-127)
Mosquito, Tara June Winch , single work short story
'For my nineteenth birthday I got a single-parent pension card and a bassinet. He was gone before the first ultrasound.' (129)
(p. 129-142)
Longitude, Tara June Winch , single work short story
'When they fucked at the beginning of the relationship he would look at her face, and make an O with his lips and break a smile, lean in and kiss her...' (143)
(p. 143-155)
The Proust Running Group of Paris, Tara June Winch , single work short story
'Avant-garde posturing - his wife liked those types of books, which further cemented Proust's general disdain for her...' (157)
(p. 157-172)
A Late Netting, Tara June Winch , single work short story (p. 173-181)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

​Indigenous Transnational : Pluses and Perils and Tara June Winch​ Paul Sharrad , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November no. 12 2020;
'In the context of the "transnational turn" in Australian literary studies, I consider the dynamics of writing and reading by and around Aboriginal literature. Positioning of authors, books and readings across, through and beyond nation spaces has particular challenges for Indigenous writers who locate identity on "country", with reception determined largely by a national framing. Informed by work from Lynda Ng, Chadwick Allen and others, the article examines the transnational movements of and around the fiction of Tara June Winch.' (Publication abstract)
Precarity and Survival in Tara June Winch’s After the Carnage Sue Kossew , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 64 2019;

'The short story genre is particularly well suited to capturing ‘fragmentation, displacement, diaspora and identity’, according to Maggie Awadalla and Paul March-Russell (3). This claim seems to be borne out in a number of recent collections of Australian short stories by writers of nonmainstream backgrounds whose stories focus on exactly these issues. Examples include Nam Le’s The Boat (2008), Roanna Gonsalves’s The Permanent Resident (2016), Maxine Beneba Clarke’s Foreign Soil (2014) and Tara June Winch’s After the Carnage (2016), the latter being the focus of this essay. All of these writers display an awareness in their stories of ‘entangled histories that precede and exceed imperial and national formations’, to quote Dilip M. Menon (38). Menon, writing about the Global South and using Édouard Glissant’s term, ‘archipelagic thinking’, coined in relation to the Caribbean, further explicates this kind of thinking as generative of ‘maps of affinities’ that recognise ‘the fact that identities are conjunctural and oscillate between narrower and wider imaginings … between local identities and international ones’ (40). This essay takes up the concept of alliances and ‘maps of affinities’ as they are represented in and by Winch’s short story collection. Winch is an Indigenous Australian writer of Wiradjuri, Afghan, and English heritage who is now based in France. Even this brief biographical information draws attention to the mobility of contemporary global identities and the shifting nature of national identification. Winch’s own physical distance from Australia (she currently lives in Europe) has, she has suggested in an interview, been helpful for her writing, enabling an outsider’s view that has involved ‘searching for [her] story amongst other people’s stories’ (‘After the Carnage’ n.p.). In dialogue with these fluid national identities and entangled histories are issues of intersectionality where race, class and gender impact on the themes of violence, disadvantage and precarity that bring different minoritised constituencies into proximity with each other. Winch, I argue, thematises the ways in which violence, gender, race, class and precarity may be seen to be intertwined. At the same time, her stories reveal moments of survival and resilience in the precarious lives of their characters. In writing not just of the Australian nation but also of the transnation(al), her stories draw attention to cross-cultural affiliations as well as to the ongoing inequalities that beset marginalised groups. Menon’s concept of ‘maps of affinities’ is thus a useful lens through which to view these stories. This term aptly engages the ways in which Winch, in this collection, addresses the ‘conjunctural’ (40) interactions between the global and local, reminding readers of the ongoing global after-effects of colonisation, and the ways in which violence and survival are common to both.' (Introduction)

What I’m Reading Laura Elvery , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2018;
What I’m Reading Nick Earls , 2017 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2017;
Lives Reshaped by the Power of Memories Elly Varrenti , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3-4 September 2016; (p. 18)

— Review of After the Carnage Tara June Winch , 2016 selected work short story
Lives Reshaped by the Power of Memories Elly Varrenti , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3-4 September 2016; (p. 18)

— Review of After the Carnage Tara June Winch , 2016 selected work short story
Tara June Winch Shows New Sophistication in After the Carnage Gretchen Shirm , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Brisbane Times , 9 September 2016;

— Review of After the Carnage Tara June Winch , 2016 selected work short story
'It's difficult to believe it has been 10 years since Tara June Winch's astonishing debut Swallow the Air. Winch's startling voice and ability to punctuate her world with arresting images resulted in a deluge of accolades. Notably, she received the Rolex Protege and Artist Mentorship, pairing her with Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Laureate in literature. Since then, Winch has been at work on a novel, with her next instalment eagerly anticipated. But first she has delivered this short story collection. ...'
Well-Travelled Tales Kerryn Goldsworthy , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 384 2016; (p. 49)

— Review of After the Carnage Tara June Winch , 2016 selected work short story

'Tara June Winch's first and only other book to date, a series of linked stories called Swallow the Air, was written while she was pregnant with her daughter Lila and published in 2006 when she was not yet twenty-three. It was shortlisted in its category for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards and for The Age Book of the Year, and it won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous Writing, the Dobbie Award for a first book by a woman writer, the NSW Premier's Literary Award in the UTS Award for New Writing category, and the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists Award. Since then, Winch has published stories and articles in Vogue and McSweeney's as well as numerous major Australian publications, and has worked with Wole Soyinka after winning the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Award' (Introduction)

The Bleeding Edge : New Short Fiction Sophia Barnes , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2016;

— Review of After the Carnage Tara June Winch , 2016 selected work short story ; Peripheral Vision Paddy O'Reilly , 2015 selected work short story ; Portable Curiosities Julie Koh , 2016 selected work short story
After the Carnage by Tara June Winch Marian Barker , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Good Reading , November 2016; (p. 34)
Precarity and Survival in Tara June Winch’s After the Carnage Sue Kossew , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 64 2019;

'The short story genre is particularly well suited to capturing ‘fragmentation, displacement, diaspora and identity’, according to Maggie Awadalla and Paul March-Russell (3). This claim seems to be borne out in a number of recent collections of Australian short stories by writers of nonmainstream backgrounds whose stories focus on exactly these issues. Examples include Nam Le’s The Boat (2008), Roanna Gonsalves’s The Permanent Resident (2016), Maxine Beneba Clarke’s Foreign Soil (2014) and Tara June Winch’s After the Carnage (2016), the latter being the focus of this essay. All of these writers display an awareness in their stories of ‘entangled histories that precede and exceed imperial and national formations’, to quote Dilip M. Menon (38). Menon, writing about the Global South and using Édouard Glissant’s term, ‘archipelagic thinking’, coined in relation to the Caribbean, further explicates this kind of thinking as generative of ‘maps of affinities’ that recognise ‘the fact that identities are conjunctural and oscillate between narrower and wider imaginings … between local identities and international ones’ (40). This essay takes up the concept of alliances and ‘maps of affinities’ as they are represented in and by Winch’s short story collection. Winch is an Indigenous Australian writer of Wiradjuri, Afghan, and English heritage who is now based in France. Even this brief biographical information draws attention to the mobility of contemporary global identities and the shifting nature of national identification. Winch’s own physical distance from Australia (she currently lives in Europe) has, she has suggested in an interview, been helpful for her writing, enabling an outsider’s view that has involved ‘searching for [her] story amongst other people’s stories’ (‘After the Carnage’ n.p.). In dialogue with these fluid national identities and entangled histories are issues of intersectionality where race, class and gender impact on the themes of violence, disadvantage and precarity that bring different minoritised constituencies into proximity with each other. Winch, I argue, thematises the ways in which violence, gender, race, class and precarity may be seen to be intertwined. At the same time, her stories reveal moments of survival and resilience in the precarious lives of their characters. In writing not just of the Australian nation but also of the transnation(al), her stories draw attention to cross-cultural affiliations as well as to the ongoing inequalities that beset marginalised groups. Menon’s concept of ‘maps of affinities’ is thus a useful lens through which to view these stories. This term aptly engages the ways in which Winch, in this collection, addresses the ‘conjunctural’ (40) interactions between the global and local, reminding readers of the ongoing global after-effects of colonisation, and the ways in which violence and survival are common to both.' (Introduction)

What I’m Reading Nick Earls , 2017 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2017;
What I’m Reading Laura Elvery , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2018;
​Indigenous Transnational : Pluses and Perils and Tara June Winch​ Paul Sharrad , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November no. 12 2020;
'In the context of the "transnational turn" in Australian literary studies, I consider the dynamics of writing and reading by and around Aboriginal literature. Positioning of authors, books and readings across, through and beyond nation spaces has particular challenges for Indigenous writers who locate identity on "country", with reception determined largely by a national framing. Informed by work from Lynda Ng, Chadwick Allen and others, the article examines the transnational movements of and around the fiction of Tara June Winch.' (Publication abstract)
Last amended 28 Sep 2017 12:40:55
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