Cirrus@Austlit

'Portraits is a love letter to our culture makers, a sparkling collection of more than 300 drawings of artists, writers, musicians, thinkers and makers compiled from W. H. Chong’s sketchbooks of the last decade. There are also paintings, prints, and digital art. Chong’s portraits present a kaleidoscope of the Australian cultural community, from national icons to local legends, all pursuing their individual passions and inspiration.' (Publication summary)

'From the bestselling creators of Tippy & Jellybean - The True Story of the Brave Koala who Saved Her Baby From a Bushfire, this affirming and delightful tale is based on a true story of animal rescue and community cooperation.

'Flipper and Finnegan live on a beautiful island.
Every morning they hunt for fish in the clear blue ocean waters.
Every evening they waddle up the beach together with all their friends - it's a penguin parade.

'But one day, when Flipper comes up for air she gets covered in something that is black and smelly and sticky - and Finnegan is nowhere to be seen...

'This is the miraculous true story of how a viral knitting campaign helped save the lives of Phillip Island's Little Penguins.' (Publication summary)

'Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: was the world’s technology about to crash down around her? The world’s technology did not crash. But there were worse disasters to come: Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague.

'Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury set, colonial administrator, publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the twentieth century becomes something else altogether.

'Complex, heartfelt, darkly funny and deeply moving, this is Sophie Cunningham’s most important book to date – a dazzlingly original novel about what it’s like to live through a time that feels like the end of days, and how we can find comfort and answers in the past.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Leading Australian writers respond to the challenges of 2020, to create a vital cultural record of these extraordinary times.

'Writers, scientists, historians, journalists and commentators consider subjects as broad as culture and the arts, working as a doctor, travel, domestic violence, security, immigration, the death of a loved one, geopolitics, distance and zoom to ensure we never forget the experience of this pile-on of a year.

'Including original pieces from Lenore Taylor, Nyadol Nuon, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Lucashenko, Billy Griffiths, Jess Hill, Kim Scott, Brenda Walker, Jane Rawson, Omar Sakr, Richard McGregor, Jennifer Mills, Gabrielle Chan, John Birmingham, Tim Flannery, Rebecca Giggs, Kate Cole-Adams, George Megalogenis, James Bradley, Alison Croggan, Melanie Cheng, Kirsten Tranter, Tom Griffiths, Joelle Gergis and Delia Falconer.' (Publication summary)

'Tippy and her baby Jellybean live in a beautiful eucalyptus forest.

'One day, they wake up and sniff the air. It's smokey, hot and windy.

'Kangaroos and wallabies are bounding. Lizards and snakes are slithering. Wombats are heading to their burrows.The cockatoos take off in an enormous flock.

'Tippy can't hop. Or run. Or fly. Instead she shelters her baby in the only way she can…

'This is the uplifting story of a mother koala who saved her baby from a bushfire, and the dedicated vets who look after them until they are healed and ready to go home.' (Publication summary)
 

'The women that Robyn Davidson had a powerful effect on, Richard Cooke tells us, include author Anna Krien, adventurer Esther Nunn, and his wife. ‘I watched as the power of this book and its author, their energy and weight, worked an entrainment across cultures and generations,’ writes Cooke. In some ways his essay charts his struggle with that power. How not to fall into the trap that others who have tackled Davidson have fallen into? ‘I lagged decades of writers and pilgrims, interlopers and fans. Reading interviews to try to chicane through the questions already asked was pointless. They most often sought answers about the same thing – her first book, now published forty years ago.’' (Introduction)

 'The article offers information on the Birthing Tree, one of the 260 sacred trees under threat from the building of the highway's Section 2b. It states that it remains common practice to offset vegetation lost by planting new vegetation. It mentions that the state government says it is "committed to working with Aboriginal Victorians towards Australia's first treaty" but its actions indicate that it is more committed to working with Aboriginal Victorians who don't get in the way.'  (Publication abstract)

'Depending on your definitions, this particular essay has taken three months to write and the book of essays that it's a part of has taken - again, depending on your definitions - five years. Saplings grow far more quickly than my manuscript has. The production timeline of your average physical book is easily long enough for an entire ecosystem to be destroyed. This should make me write faster, but in fact the opposite has happened.' (Publication abstract)

'How do we take in the beauty of our planet while processing the losses? What trees can survive in the city? Which animals can survive in the wild? How do any of us—humans, animals, trees—find a forest we can call home?

'In these moving, thought-provoking essays Sophie Cunningham considers the meaning of trees and our love of them. She chronicles the deaths of both her fathers, and the survival of P-22, a mountain lion in Griffith Park, Los Angeles; contemplates the loneliness of Ranee, the first elephant in Australia; celebrates the iconic eucalyptus and explores its international status as an invasive species.

'City of Trees is a powerful collection of nature, travel and memoir writing set in the context of global climate change. It meanders through, circles around and sometimes faces head on the most pressing issues of the day. It never loses sight of the trees.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'From humble beginnings, the Stella Prize has grown to be a major force in championing Australian women writers. Six years on, one of the prize’s co-founders reflects on prize culture and the successes, challenges and future of the Stella initiative.' 

'I have returned to Cold Light, the third novel in the Edith Trilogy by Frank Moorhouse, time and time again. One of my reasons for going back to it is, as is often the case with writers, self-interest. I am currently writing a novel about Leonard Woolf and Woolf was, like Edith Campbell Berry, an odd fish. A bureaucrat of sorts, committed to public service. A man who could be both cruel and deeply romantic, and, while not as queer as Edith, he certainly surrounded himself with queer acquaintances, living the life of a Bloomsbury man, a man who was in, to quote a phrase oft-used by Edith, in a Bloomsbury Marriage. In the current draft of my novel a fictional character called Bella jots various scenes of a novel she is writing down on 3 x 5 inch cards. It was no surprise to me, really, when researching this lecture, that I discovered Frank Moorhouse carries 3 x 5 inch cards everywhere he goes, in a leather custom made wallet.' (Introduction)

'The ground covered was both geographical and historical: the natural features that shape Melbourne's boundaries were created 400 million years ago, the city founded 180 years ago, and the current boundary lines fixed almost twenty years ago.'

(Publication Summary)