Cirrus@Austlit

'The 2017 Marriage Law Postal Survey marked a historic moment for the gay community in Australia, as it resulted in same-sex unions being recognised under law. For novelists, this historic change served as the impetus to re-evaluate the position of gay men as queer subjectivity became more articulable through the market and was no longer excluded from the social mainstream or, in Marxist terminology, totality. This presents a challenge: how do writers dispense with outdated taxonomies of oppression, while still identifying the unique ways in which those who exist along axes of sexual difference continue to be exploited and oppressed? This article examines The Pillars (2019) by Peter Polites and The Adversary (2020) by Ronnie Scott to identify ways in which this nascent dimension of gay life is being depicted in fiction, arguing that gay fiction in Australia can meaningfully represent, and critique, its relation to capitalism. ' (Publication abstract)

'For the white Australian writer, the question of how to portray Aboriginal history in fiction is a fraught one. Novels of this kind require the author to cross cultural boundaries in an attempt to imagine the subjectivity of someone entirely unlike themselves. This difficult task is further complicated by the gaps in the archival record that introduce a range of trade-offs and decisions into the creative process.' (Introduction)

'What can a novel say about something as boundless as a nation? It might appear to be beyond the scope of what a work of fiction might achieve from some angles, given the infinite points a writer might begin or end a story about nationhood.' (Introduction)

'It’s a truism among climate fiction writers that at some point soon all contemporary fiction will become climate fiction. Already, a range of topics demands that the author is awake to the changes taking place. Could anyone seriously write about the Arctic without mention of ice loss? Or bushfires without mention of drought?' (Introduction)

'Rin Braden is almost ready to give up on life after the heart-breaking death of her lover Yamaan and the everyday dread of working for her mother's corrupt private prison company. But through a miracle, Yamaan has survived and turns up in an immigration detention facility in Australia, trading his labour for a supposedly safe place to live. This is no ordinary facility, it's Eaglehawk MTC, a manufactory built by her mother's company to exploit the flood of environmental refugees. Now Rin must find a way to free Yamaan before the ghosts of her past and a string of bad choices catch up with them both. In its vision of the future, Daughter of Bad Times explores the truth about a growing inhumanity as profit becomes the priority.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'There’s a long tradition in Tasmanian literature of the gothic convict saga. In fact, Tasmanians do the convict novel better than anyone. We have a wealth of mythology, trope and imagery on which to draw and an outsized sense of our own past, a past that’s visible in the architecture wherever you go on the island.

'Our best known book, Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life, provided the template and writers have iterated on it down the generations. Think particularly of Richard Butler, Bryce Courtenay, Christopher Koch and Richard Flanagan. Now Rachel Leary has provided us with a contemporary, skilful update on the dustier of these traditions in her new novel Bridget Crack.' (Introduction)

'These days the release of a new Kim Scott novel feels like a literary event. It wasn’t always this way. His first two books, True Country (1993) and Benang (1999), established him more as a writer’s writer: a brilliant, if raw, voice calling to us from across the Nullarbor. But with his previous book, the gobsmacking That Deadman Dance (2010), Scott announced himself as the country’s most important novelist.

'It was a book that took a fresh look at Australia’s past. We had the typical scenes of first contact as white settlers arrived in Albany and began to alienate Aboriginal land, yet in Scott’s telling this didn’t devolve into violence.' (Introduction)

'I have heard it said that men are reluctant to become fathers because we haven’t yet finished being children ourselves. There’s quite a bit of truth to that, I suspect. But, then, how do any of us become men? Who teaches us? What are the rites of passage that lead us into manhood? These are the questions Brisbane writer Ben Hobson seems to be contemplating in his moving debut novel, To Become a Whale.' (Introduction)