Cirrus@Austlit

'A young woman grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy and romance, perfect for fans of Tracey Lien, Emma Cline and Mireille Juchau.

'January 1997: In the small town of Jericho, New South Wales, Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible above Jericho.

'As the comet begins to brighten, visitors flock like pilgrims into town. Supermarkets run out of canned goods; campgrounds fill to capacity. And more and more people are drawn into the orbit of Joseph Evans, an enigmatic local who believes the comet's arrival is nothing short of a divine message. But Sylvia will soon realise that she isn't the only one haunted by the past. While everyone else is looking to the night sky for answers, her quest to uncover her husband's killer will unearth long-held secrets with far-reaching consequences.

'A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of the truth, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.' (Publication summary)

'Three poet-researchers conduct three different readings of Tishani Doshi’s poem A Fable for the 21st Century. We ask how as creative practitioners and critics we can negotiate the desire for mastery of a text, and the dangers a semiotic reading presents, allowing for difference, indecision, and complexity. We present our initial readings of the poem and summarize our discussions of them grounded in the transactional reading theory of Louise Rosenblatt and nuanced by assemblage theory. A final section includes three original poems written in response to Doshi, together with a brief discussion of them, and forms part of our conclusion.'

Source: Abstract.

'This article shares an experimental poem created by three poet-researchers using an online word processor to collaborate within a single document. We attempt to blur the line between creative and academic writing, focusing on the possibilities for writing as a method of inquiry and the opportunities for different perceptions of being that it suggests. Our project unfolds as we also produce a brief diffractive reading that does not mirror or deconstruct the poem, but thinks it in an alternative way, as a broader collaboration, or intra-action between entities, both human and non-human. We avoid determining how our purported individual voices merge to form any united voice. Rather, we are alert to agencies and flows that complicate understandings of us as three rational, discrete, fully formed human figures articulating coherent narratives. We therefore offer a response to theoretical calls to explore collaborative writing as inquiry, through sharing our practice.'

Source: Abstract.