From the Introduction: 'Writing about family - particularly real family - can be an intensely personal, far from easy thing to do. We are both honoured and grateful to have the opportunity to share these stories and poems with you.
To take this book back to the seed of its creation is to go back to a summer night in 2006. The three of us were lolling about a lounge room floor, allowing the conversation to be driven by whim and wine. At some point a particularly hilarious family story was told and from there they continued to flow, with the conversation eventually turning to the seemingly bottomless well of quality narrative material families provide. At this point, the idea for Blood was formed.
Our approach was very simple. We contacted individuals from a range of backgrounds who we thought could tell a good story and we asked them to write about family (and where possible provide an image to accompany their piece). They were free to choose the form their writing would take and the specific subject matter within the broader theme of family. The only real condition we placed on them was that whatever they wrote, it must be non fiction. Our feeling was that when it comes to family, the truth is not only stranger than fiction but often more moving, funny and engaging.
As the one unavoidable commonality of all humanity, family has long provided writers and artists with a direct doorway to the universal. Over the months that the submissions came in, we sat reading lumpy-throated at desks and laughing out loud on trams, and we hope that Blood has its own resonance for you.'
