Cirrus@Austlit

'WA author Ron Elliott's new novel, Burn Patterns, tells the story of Iris Foster, an arsonist profiler and psychologist who is trying to put her life back together after being targeted by an arsonist. We asked Ron about his literary influences, the type of people who like to light fires and what motivates them.'

'Australian author of literary and crime fiction Dorothy Johnston writes about the real-life kidnapping of a camel, coming home to Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, and how she came to write Through a Camel’s Eye.'

'Think of the typical problem drinker, and you probably imagine drink-drivers, underage guzzlers and the perpetrators of one-punch attacks. The brother of Elspeth Muir, however, was none of these. But three days after a night of heavy drinking, he was found dead in the Brisbane River – his blood alcohol level was 0.25 at his time of death. We asked Elspeth to tell us about her memoir, Wasted, a memoir about her brother and an investigation into Australia’s drinking culture.'

'Australian history has traditionally been taught as a dreary catalogue of dull facts, devoid of the rivers of blood and the heroic antics of shameless selfpromoters that feature so prominently in the chronicles of other countries. But as journalist Ben Pobjie shows in Error Australis: The reality recap of Australian history, our history is full of fascinating, funny and absurd incidents.'

'Turkey was a country that Australian writer Nancy Knudsen had visited years before, and she thought she had it pegged. But it wasn’t until she lived there for two years that she really came to know and love the city of Istanbul, which she recalls in her memoir, Accidentally Istanbul: Decoding Turkeyfor the enquiring Western traveller .'