AustLit

'The concept of Woven, a Fair Trade project from Red Room Poetry, seems simple but the reality is complex: one local First Nations poet is paired with another First Nations poet from another continent, and together they create a poem. This is an ambitious undertaking for the poets themselves and especially for the editor, Māori poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu, who should be commended for stewarding this project through the last few tumultuous years. The resulting book is a gorgeous tapestry of weavings from some fine poets.' (Introduction)

'From the 2022 David Unaipon winner comes an outstanding and timely collection of speculative fiction imagining futures where Indigenous sovereignty is fully reasserted.

'In this stunningly inventive and thought-provoking collection, Mykaela Saunders poses the question—what might country, community and culture look like in the Tweed if Gooris reasserted their sovereignty?

'Each of the stories in Always Will Be is set in its own future version of the Tweed. In one, a group of girls plot their escape from a home they have no memory of entering. In another, two men make a final visit to the country they love as they contemplate a new life in a faraway place. Saunders imagines different scenarios for how the local Goori community might reassert sovereignty - reclaiming country, exerting full self-determination, or incorporating non-Indigenous people into the social fabric - while practising creative, ancestrally approved ways of living with changing climates.

'Epic in scope, and with a diverse cast of characters, Always Will Be is the ground-breaking winner of the 2022 David Unaipon Award. This is a forward-thinking collection that refuses cynicism and despair, and instead offers entertaining stories that celebrate Goori ways of being, knowing, doing - and becoming' (Publication summary)

'One night a few years ago our neighbour Lisa knocks on our door. Her two young daughters are with her and I can tell something is up. The oldest, Sally, has just started primary school and the youngest, Patty, is a couple of years behind. We normally talk every day – mostly it’s the girls chatting away to me while I work out the front – but I haven’t seen them around much over the last few weeks. I’ve been worried about them and we are all happy to see each other.' (Introduction)

'THERE ARE AS many ways of thinking about time as there are cultures, but I’m going to talk about the one I know best and contrast it with the one that we’ve been drowning in ever since colonial capitalism started pouring it over us in 1788.'(Introduction)

'I’ve worked in Aboriginal education since 2003, in different institutions and teaching capacities, and I’ve always ignored the personal impacts of my job, stuffing them down and getting on with things the way my stoic old people always did. If I ever had to talk about the harm that educational institutions cause, I’d just focus on the cultural and communal impacts, particularly on my students. But reading Munanjali and South Sea Islander Professor Chelsea Watego’s Another Day in the Colony (UQP) allowed me to admit the personal slights and to feel them rather than repressing them.'  (Introduction)

'A world-first collection of blackfella speculative fiction from well-known and emerging First Nations writers. The first-ever anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction – written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, for blackfellas and about blackfellas. In these stories, some writers are summoning ancestral spirits from the past, while others are looking straight down the barrel of potential futures, which always end up curving back around to hold us up from behind. Dazzling, imaginative and unsettling, This All Come Back Now centres and celebrates communities, cultures and country.' (Publication summary)