'Literary Nillumbik Anthology features the winning short stories and poems from the Alan Marshall Short Story Award 2016 and Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Award 2016.' (Publication summary)
'This is a hugely heart-warming love letter from an adult to their mother – rich both in tone and theme. Earth Orbit is a story that creeps up on you. In the opening paragraphs, the imagery is deceptively naïve and the child’s voice almost cloying, but what we come quickly to appreciate is that the spaceship we have entered is in fact a Datsun 120Y the child’s homeless mother has decorated with blue cellophane, pricked through with starry holes, in an act of maternal love and protection that borders on the heroic.
'The redemptive power of story and the imagination underpins this moving narrative, as ongoing hardship is reshaped and so endured, the importance of what is real or not becoming less crucial than the fierce, joyful love between a mother and child.' (6)
