Cirrus@Austlit

'Good things can spring from disappointment. Author and academic Kate Hall and I began talking about organising a queer writers’ festival after we were dropped from a Melbourne suburbs writers’ festival because, the programming director felt, there was no interest in a session about gothic queer writing. Kate was so enthused by the idea, she quickly brought in performance artist Timothy Ryan.

'I dropped out due to persistent ill health and overcommitment, and then watched in admiration as these two champions pulled together a program, seemingly out of thin air, in Melbourne and five regional centres. I caught up with them as they were building up to two major events in Geelong and Warrnambool.' (Introduction)

'I have admired Christos Tsiolkas since his first book Loaded rammed into the Australian publishing scene in 1995. And although the ‘big P’ – to use the author’s designation –  political books that catapulted him to fame didn’t affect me to the same degree, 7 ½ rocked my world.

'It is wild and fearlessly, messily, human. I was so exhilarated, I couldn’t stop myself from emailing him a slew of questions. It was my way of continuing a thrilling reading process – one that took me back to the author’s early work. Jesus Man and Dead Europe came to mind as I powered through this audacious novel.

'Beyond that, there was the thrill of watching a writer turn novelistic expectations on their head by showing the reader what goes on in a writer’s mind as he corralls life’s wild horses and turns them to the services of art.' (Introduction)

'Living paintings, spectral children, cannibal serial killers, lost souls, haunted houses, and ancient evil proliferate The Door and Other Uncanny Tales. Everywhere reality and fantasy collapse to create a new unstable world, even the body is not what it seems. Combined with Dmetri Kakmi’s gothic imagination and mordant humor, the result is fiction that is as memorable as it is unsettling.

'This collection contains three new and three previously published stories, including the acclaimed Haunting Matilda, The Long Lonely Road and The Boy by the Gate.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'A disturbing tale of how a second invasion might manifest itself with a new breed of Martian. An enemy, defeated and demoralised, prepares to make a comeback in a most unexpected way.'

Source: Foreword.

'Published in 2011, Margaret Wild’s picture book Vampyre is a hallucinatory marriage of minimal text and symbolic imagery, rendered in a subdued colour palette. Echoing the image and writing style, the story pivots on a complex exchange of ideas. Chief among these is the individual striving for personal salvation. The journey is fraught and the end remains ambiguous, paradoxical.' (Introduction)