Cirrus@Austlit

 (Introduction)

'Feminism and fantasy have a winning history, as demonstrated by Angela Carter’s celebrated collection of revisionary fairytales, The Bloody Chamber (1979), or the ground-breaking television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003). As the latter suggests, they often meet in the YA space. Courtney Collins’ Bird, while not marketed as YA fiction, will appeal to the youthful, distinguished as it is by teenage protagonists, fast-paced storytelling and an immersive use of second-person narration.'

'Sophie Matthiesson’s debut novel, Together We Fall Apart, is another contribution to the genre of feminine middle-class melodrama in Australian fiction, the growing appetite for which might be bound up with the rise of book groups. This type of book is characterised by a well-educated, professional female protagonist and a plot centred on individual romance and familial challenges, with the latter most typically involving the death of a parent. These novels, which seem to prize being relatable, are often characterised by what Patrick White might have called a “dreary, dun-coloured” realism. Matthiesson’s novel isn’t always compelling – descriptions of busy airports and train stations are unnecessary and the dialogue is often banal – but the story is certainly not without appeal. This is primarily because it retains a bold interest in the unsentimental, even unpalatable, complexity of human relationships.' (Introduction)

'A living songbook more than four years in the making, Andrew Ford’s hymnal brings together the words of sixteen contemporary Australian writers – poets, essayists and folksingers – in songs of praise, awe, grief, hope, joy, and natural splendour, dedicated not to a god, but to the land.

'The ever-daring voices of Luminescence Chamber Singers join forces with two rising stars: Hilary Geddes, 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow and lead guitarist of Triple J favourites The Buoys, and category-defying cellist Freya Schack-Arnott. Red Dirt Hymns unfolds to the evocative imagery of Sammy Hawker, whose art is created within the fabric of country itself: saltwater, limestone and eucalypt.

'From Ellen van Neerven’s dark clouds to John Kinsella’s abundant gardens, Red Dirt Hymns does what a hymnal is meant to do: it draws us closer – to each other, and to the light and shade of our wide brown land.'

Source: Canberra International Music Festival.

'Drawing a distinction between genre fiction and literary fiction has come to seem like a reactionary gesture. Likewise, classifying a novel as romance can no longer be regarded as a pejorative act. However, when it comes to Melissa Goode’s debut novel, Ordinary Human Love, it can be useful for readers to know we are firmly in the territory of generic – one might indeed even say “ordinary” – romance.' (Introduction)

'Nova Weetman’s Love, Death & Other Scenes is an elegiac memoir, a subgenre of memoir that gives ballast to stories of everyday lives by focusing on life’s ultimate drama: death. Of course, the everyday and mortality are intimate companions. When the poet Philip Larkin asks, “Where can we live but days?”, the question brings “the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields.”' (Introduction)   

'Suzie Miller is a multi-award-winning playwright, whose one-woman play Prima Facie – after earning plaudits for Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company – was staged in the West End, starring Jodie Comer, and won a Best New Play Olivier Award. Prima Facie ran on Broadway this year and Miller is adapting it into a film, but it has also found its way into the form of this novel.' (Introduction)   

'Nadine J. Cohen’s debut novel, Everyone and Everything, brings together the drama of a young woman’s breakdown with comedy reminiscent of Woody Allen or Nora Ephron. Anxiety, for instance, “arrived without warning and then wouldn’t leave. Like the Kardashians.” Cohen manages the balancing act of her dramedy through the appealing cipher of her first-person female narrator, Yael Silver, who is neurotic and genuinely tested by life, but also spirited and well-dressed.' (Introduction)   

'Dementia has been in the spotlight in recent times, largely because an ageing population has made the disease unignorable. Indeed, we have seen the labelling of a new generation – the “sandwich generation” – to recognise a cohort of middle-aged people caught between caring for their growing children and their ageing parents. Cynthia Dearborn’s The Year My Family Unravelled is a personal account of the challenges of caregiving for the elderly, though in Dearborn’s case she finds herself sandwiched between two countries, Australia and the United States, and two phases of her life, the functional one of her present and the dysfunctional one of her childhood.' (Introduction)   

'While the terms ‘romance’ and ‘novel’ are entangled at their origins, romance novels have been traditionally disparaged as formulaic and frivolous, feminine and anti-feminist. Nevertheless, romance is the most popular genre in the world. Harlequin reportedly sells two books every second. In recent times, scholars have given the genre serious attention.' (Introduction)

'The ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for short fiction, is now open and closes on April 24, with total prize money of $12,500. In this week’s ABR Podcast, we feature Maria Takolander’s story ‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’, which won ABR’s short story competition in 2010, the year before it was renamed the Jolley Prize. It is one of the best-read features on ABR’s website, which hosts content going back to 1978. ‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’ is an artful take on academic intrigue and absurdism. Maria Takolander’s story appeared in the December 2010–January 2011 issue of ABR. Listen to Maria Takolander reading her story thirteen years later.' (Production summary)

'Trauma is often said to be unspeakable. There are various reasons for this. Pain and shame are silencing, as are implicit forms of censorship (of the kind scorning trauma literature, for instance) and explicit injunctions against speaking (from perpetrators, enablers, or the law). But it is also the case that trauma doesn’t inhere in language. Trauma lives in the limbic system, which is that of the fight, flight, or freeze response, and which is necessarily more immediate than language processing. After all, when your life is under threat, it’s not words you need, but action.' (Introduction)