Cirrus@Austlit

'Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings Debut Spotlight feature. For April that debut is Fed to Red Birds by Rijn Collins (Simon & Schuster), a beautifully evocative portrait of an enchanted mind in an enchanting place. We spoke to Rijn about her publishing journey and the inspiration behind the book.'

'Prepare to be bewitched by Iceland and the book that has enchanted readers for decades – and imprisoned one of them.

'Elva loves Iceland for many reasons – the epic landscape of gods and volcanoes, weather that’s the polar opposite of her home in Australia, and the fact that it’s where her mother might have gone back to when she disappeared. Iceland is where Elva’s beloved grandfather – the famous children’s book author – lives in a remote village and where the beings that haunt her imagination reside.

'Elva is interested in the odd things people make – Victorian collectibles, old spells, taxidermy, fairy tales. The weird, the wonderful and the sometimes macabre. She’s got a few quirks of her own that she’s (mainly) keeping under control. Except one.

'Working in a shop of curiosities, studying at an Icelandic language school, Elva begins to explore her obsessions, and when her grandfather suffers a stroke, they threaten to overtake her. Then she meets Remy, a painter who’s got some secrets of his own …

'In her captivating debut, Rijn Collins has created a beautifully evocative portrait of an enchanted mind in an enchanting place – a story of everyday magic, both dark and light; of families and the shadows they can cast; of the delights and dangers of the imagination. Fed to Red Birds will transport you to remote corners of both the world and the human heart.' (Publication summary)

'What happens when a collection of writers are given a picture, a word limit and the freedom to see where an image can take them? Playing on an old adage, Picture 1000 Words is a unique pictorial short story anthology that experiments with the process of writing while simultaneously celebrating an enigmatic collection of photographs by Cam Cope. Thirteen writers have produced original, highly personalised 1000 word compositions that the reader explores together with the creative processes the authors have been through to write them. Does the reader see what the writer sees? Or do they find something else hidden in the visuals? Intriguingly the authors were not told the real-world origins of the images before penning them. So where do they come from? To satisfy curiosity, Cope provides an index with the real world captions behind the photos so readers can see how far from the truth the pens did fall. ' (Publication summary)