Ashleigh Synnott Ashleigh Synnott i(A119232 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 This Room i "Sometimes I think", Ashleigh Synnott , 2022 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , June vol. 81 no. 2 2022; (p. 91) Meanjin Online 2022;
1 Peaches i "I could never be in a relationship", Ashleigh Synnott , 2022 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 81 no. 1 2022; Meanjin Online 2022;
1 Blockhead i "My father used to call me a blockhead.", Ashleigh Synnott , 2021 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 80 no. 4 2021;
1 y separately published work icon Monster Ashleigh Synnott , Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2021 22016694 2021 selected work short story

'Charting surreal and yet familiar worlds where hope and horror co-exist, Monster is ruthless, weird, dark and funny. These 33 stories explore loss, addiction, love and breakdown with unsentimental economy. Stories concern mothers losing or leaving children, relationships dangling by a thread or exploding. Some characters are institutionalised, others are profoundly lonely. Some just wander around — lost, while others are filled with shocking violence. There is joy here, too, and a kind of blazing intimacy in this debut collection of tough, tender and unflinching stories.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 A Child’s Six Ashleigh Synnott , 2020 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , December 2020;
1 The Lesbian i "I was reading ‘The Lesbian’ by Charles Bukowski", Ashleigh Synnott , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , June vol. 79 no. 2 2020; (p. 141)
1 Salmonella Excretion in Joy-riding Pigs Ashleigh Synnott , 2020 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 237.5 2020;
1 Story of a Gumtree Ashleigh Synnott , 2018 single work short story
— Appears in: Long Paddock , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018;
'There’s a gumtree, an extremely large one, right outside my window. It is so large it gets stuck to all the other trees—it pushes them away, extends itself. Possums live there, or so Helen said. This was just yesterday when she was checking it out. I’d asked her over to put it to her straight—how things stand—but soon we’d got stuck in and things had moved themselves in the other direction.' 

 (Introduction)

1 A Question of Intimacy (Or: Against Suicide) Ashleigh Synnott , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Southerly , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018; (p. 62-71)
'Writing is pure loss, for Maurice Blanchot, and the only way to comprehend the loss inherent in the act of writing is to write, and in doing that to seek nothing but “the ceaselessness of the return, effect of disastrous instability” (Blanchot 1980, 89). This is a difficult notion for the young writer, immature in her approach, naïve in her own ideas of success and failure: her own capacity. she does not come at writing merely to write, but to say something. To have said something. To speak. so pre-occupied is she with her private need to speak that she hardly knows what she says, half the time. she writes because: she knows if she doesn’t she’ll die.' 

 (Publication abstract)

1 Nothing in the Night Ashleigh Synnott , 2018 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 232 2018;

'The boy is running again. You can tell by his feet that’s what he is doing. It takes you some time to understand he is running – in the beginning the sound of those feet isn’t any way peculiar to the other morning sounds. I was once a boy myself but I was never like that: my steps never made that small smacking sound, smacking in their little rhythm along Sadlier Street.' (Introduction)

1 The Bird You Are Holding Ashleigh Synnott , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 232 2018;

'By writing stories about ‘issues’, I was trying to respond to what I saw as urgent social and moral crises. The problem was that the more I wrote, the less satisfied I felt with my mode of response, the less confident I was about fiction’s capacity to do the job. At the same time, I was becoming increasingly concerned that I was using other people’s trauma for my own benefit.'  (Introduction)

1 Locked Ashleigh Synnott , 2018 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 230 2018; (p. 60-65)

'Karl had sharpened the knife exactly as I’d asked and he’d also brought home a bottle of Japanese whisky because he knew this was coming. He’d got started on the whisky in the car, out the front. I was drinking myself, watching him through the blinds, trying to decide if I would really do it or not. When he came inside I was sitting on the lounge. I had two clean glasses ready and he sat down beside me, stinking of beer, smoke and vegetable fat plus the cleaning products they use on the grill that take me way back to preschool.' (Introduction)

1 Cleaning Products Ashleigh Synnott , 2017 single work short story
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 31 no. 1 2017; (p. 148-150)

'Graham held the phone away from his head as Claudia ran the cold water. When the back tire of the car hit the cat they both felt the soft bump but they didn't hear the screams on account of the garage door. [...]it was Nicholas again, and Graham let him go on until he'd got the car door open and was sitting in the car and the doors were closed and his seat belt was on.' (Publication abstract)

1 In the End, in the Head Ashleigh Synnott , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 222 2016; (p. 56-64)

'The accident happened on a Friday. It was reported on the six o’clock news. At half-past four the cameras found the street and interviewed the nurse on the lawn. His neighbour; she just happened to be a nurse. She rolled him; he screamed. A tragedy, he was such a nice man. A young man, a teacher at the local school. A nice, quiet man. A lovely friendly face at church.' (Introduction)

1 The Acorn of Sadness. Ashleigh Synnott , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 224 2016; (p. 34-39)
1 Not the Sea Ashleigh Synnott , 2014 single work short story
— Appears in: Award Winning Australian Writing 2014 2014; (p. 97-110) Sight Lines : 2014 UTS Writers' Anthology 2014; (p. 11-23)
1 Matthew 1987 Ashleigh Synnott , 2013 single work short story
— Appears in: The Evening Lands : 2013 UTS Writers' Anthology 2013; (p. 246-258)
1 The Habitus of Blunt Tomatoes Ashleigh Synnott , 2007 single work short story
— Appears in: What You Do and Don't Want : UTS Writers' Anthology 2007 2007; (p. 128-140)
1 3 Boys Ashleigh Synnott , 2006 single work short story
— Appears in: Making Tracks : UTS Writers' Anthology 2006 2006; (p. 43-52)
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