Cirrus@Austlit

'Alexandra Collier was a writer living in a light-filled Brooklyn brownstone in New York with the man she loved. But when she woke up to a ravenous hunger to have a baby that her partner didn't share, she had to make a choice between love or a future family.

'She chose family, which catapulted her life back to Melbourne where, at 37, she found herself single, heartbroken and living with her parents.

'Ally began dating with dedication with sometimes hilarious and often soul-crushing results. But like many single women approaching 40, she found that her reproductive timeline was rapidly outpacing her romantic life. So she began to explore another controversial option: conceiving a baby with donor sperm.

'From defying her family's expectations to searching for sperm and navigating pregnancy alone, Ally deftly takes us through the ecstatic, complicated and demanding path to becoming a solo mother by choice.' (Publication summary)

'Violet and Ruth are bored as hell in their small town Australian high school, where there’s nothing but red earth, hurricane fences and the far off whirring of the quarry. But when a new teacher arrives, the borders of the town are no longer the limit of where a girl can go. If only they can escape to Melbourne or Paris or Tokyo before the sinister creature lurking at the edges of the town snatches them up and feeds them to the insatiable earth.
 
'Underland is a new Australian play that cracks open the desert to reveal mythic beasts, Chekhovian love triangles and big sky blues, while giving the finger to everything you thought you know about "down under" from Fosters' commercials. Underland was developed at Sydney Theatre Company.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.