Cirrus@Austlit

'Cancer radically changed author Tracy Sorensen.'

'Jess Hill’s incisive examination of domestic violence saw the journalist win the coveted Stella Prize last month. But the four-year project also took an immense personal toll. “All that advice about self-care … I didn’t do any of it. I almost pointedly didn’t do it. I thought: ‘You need to feel, even just one iota of the pain and suffering the people you are talking to are feeling.’ If I was feeling really relaxed and detached from it, I wouldn’t be able to write about it in the way I wanted to … I sort of had to inhabit it.”' (Introduction)

'At the end of a long driveway off a busy road in Sydney’s north, you reach his studio first. It’s in the garage: brown brick, ’70s style, flat-roofed carport off the front. At the door is an arrow pointing to his house. The house is set behind, like an afterthought. He prefers the studio: most days he is out here, painting.' 

'Scott Rankin is on a fly-in fly-out visit to Sydney. Between appointments he meets me at a cafe at Chippendale Creative Precinct. Cement and iron pillars divide the open space and groups of lunchtime patrons. The room is lit by midday sun. There’s a buzz of productivity: conversations are focused, laptops open. Echoes sound from the kitchen.' (Introduction)

'The writer of Memoirs of a Suburban Girl on her long road out of a violent relationship. “There I am, right in the middle of my teenage years and suddenly in a serious relationship. A relationship that pushes away my other life. Being hit was beyond my world experience. I didn’t want it to happen again. I started treading a little bit more carefully, and that set up a power dynamic.'  (Introduction)

'She enters the empty bar without a sound. Loose black dress and soft sandals, a neat handbag under her arm. Outside it is the last of Sydney’s summer – blinding sunshine and scorching heat – but Michaela McGuire looks cool and readily composed.' (Introduction)

'Debra Adelaide is quick to tell me she isn’t a poet. She does love poetry though, she says, because in a very short amount of time it can take people into another space. It is highly political and very effective and not compromised in terms of its art. “Poetry is like the guerilla warfare of literature. It can just run in there really quickly, lob in a hand grenade and run out again. Stories and novels take longer to get into your system.”' (Introduction)

'Travelling to St Albans Writers’ Festival, there is a point at which you realise your routine life can be left behind. It’s about the time you’re crossing the Hawkesbury, by the slow pull of the barge through a river lit with sun. Or on arrival at the village, at the stone buildings and blossom trees. There are chickens and kelpies, people and books, children playing hide and seek. Bales of lucerne surround a fire pit, so that writers and readers can merge as one.' (Introduction)

'The morning after receiving the Vogel Literary Award, Marija Peričić sits in the A-One Cafe at the ABC Centre in Ultimo. Filled with people and lively conversations, the cafe is in rush hour. At one end a large television broadcasts the morning news, at the other end a film crew is setting up  lights and cameras. Peričić has just finished a radio interview with Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast, telling the audience in a soft, even voice, that her book, The Lost Pages, is a story about the rivalry between two men, in literature and in love. Writing a novel was her life’s dream, she said, something she had always wanted to do. ' (Introduction)