Cirrus@Austlit

'What to do with the intensity of longing that occasionally arises? Sometimes I hug my pup so hard he growls. When my pup growls, I realise I need to find some other way of letting off steam. It’s easy to imagine I could just touch myself and be done with it, but no matter how many times I make myself come, that feeling of wanting doesn’t subside. A friend has a term for the need for touch—‘skin hungry’. Lots of people live without sex, but I find it a kind of deprivation.

'What does it mean to be awakened? To want? To love? Jessie Cole is in her late thirties when she meets a man twenty years older than she is. They become lovers. Both passionate and companionable, fraught and uneven, their relationship tests her fears and anxieties. Through their interstate affair, through bushfires and the pandemic, she learns about herself, how her initiations into womanhood shaped who she is now, and how the shadow of family trauma still inhabits her body.

'Jessie Cole has written an unabashed, thrilling exploration of the very nature of desire, a story about vulnerability and strength, loss and regeneration. A memoir of the body, Desire is a visceral book in which feeling and longing are laid bare.'  (Publication summary)

'As children, Jessie Cole and her brother Jake ran wild, free to roam their rainforest home as they pleased. They had each other, parents who adored them, and two mysterious, beautiful, clever half-sisters, Billie and Zoe, who came to visit every holidays. But when Jessie was on the cusp of adolescence, tragedy struck, and her happy, loving family fell apart.

'This heartbreaking memoir asks what happens to those who are left behind when someone takes their own life. It’s about the importance of home, family and forgiveness—and finding peace in a place of pain.

'By the critically acclaimed author of Darkness on the Edge of Town and Deeper Water.' (Publication summary)

'A profound and sensuous novel of grace and beauty from a stunning young Australian talent. Innocent and unworldly, Mema is still living at home with her mother on a remote, lush hinterland property. It is a small, confined, simple sort of life, and Mema is content with it. One day, during a heavy downpour, Mema saves a stranger from a raging creek. She takes him into her family home, where, marooned by rising floods, he has to stay until the waters recede.

'His sudden presence is unsettling - for Mema, her mother and her wild friend Anja - but slowly he opens the door to a new world of beckoning possibilities that threaten to sweep Mema into the deep.' (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)