AustLit

'There have been many Australian publications about refugees and asylum seekers. Many are memoir or reportage. Perhaps the best known is Behrooz Boochani’s autobiographical No Friend But the Mountains (2018).' (Introduction)

'The Writing Mind: Creative Writing Responses to Images of the Living Brain includes 60 creatively enhanced, colour images of the living brain. Each image is followed by two short-form creative writing responses: prose and poetry written as ekphrastic 'replies' to the images. This book was conceived through a partnership between the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), the peak academic body representing the discipline of Creative Writing in Australasia, and the Science Art Network (ScAN), affiliated with the neuroimaging department at Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia.

'The broader context for the partnership is a Creative Writing | Neuroimaging Research Study currently being undertaken at Swinburne University's neuroimaging facility. The study investigates the activity in participants' brains while undertaking a creative writing workshop. While The Writing Mind focuses on creative rather than traditional research outputs, it nevertheless reflects the shared commitment of AAWP and ScAN-an abiding fidelity to transdisciplinary, open and collaborative research practices. AAWP and ScAN share an interest in the intersections between diverse disciplines-arts/science and arts/health-while considering the ways we can work together for the future for our fields and for a better world.'  (Publication summary)

'In this volume, five prose poets explore the Five major oceans as they are currently classified: the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, the Southern and the Arctic. Each 21-part sequence of poems is a particular-and sometimes oblique-rumination on one of these vast bodies of water. Together they offer an inspiring and sometimes troubling exploration of our relationship with what is, essentially, a single oceanic entity.'  (Publication summary)

(Introduction)

'Pip Williams describes her new novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, as both follow-up and companion to her 2020 debut, The Dictionary of Lost Words.'

'The concept of death has preoccupied people for probably as long as people have existed. Nonetheless, we are are practised at avoiding, forgetting or suppressing the inevitability of our own death. We write about death in philosophy and medicine and sociology, and in fiction too. But typically, these writings locate death “out there”, as an event or a case.' (Introduction)

'In these prose poem sequences, five different tastes are explored, not only with reference to food and drink,but also through their metaphorical use. There are innumerable ways of ‘tasting’ and apprehending theworld, and these poems canvass a wide range of them while also encouraging readers to consider their own diverse tastes, preferences and experiences.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Robbie Arnott’s third novel Limberlost follows two impressive earlier works. Richard Flanagan described Arnott’s first book, Flames (2018), as “strange and joyous”. Bram Presser, responding to The Rain Heron (2020), credits Arnott with “singlehandedly reinventing Australian literature”.'  (Introduction)

'Jennifer Down’s Bodies of Light is a shattering novel, one that breaks and then rebuilds its readers. It has won the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the judges commending it as “a novel of affirmation, resilience and survival, told through an astonishing voice that reinvents itself from six to 60”.' (Introduction)

'This year’s Miles Franklin shortlist is lyrical in voice, complex in form, and perhaps a little more hopeful than usual. The threads of shared concern across the volumes leave me wondering whether there is something in the zeitgeist.' (Introduction)

 (Publication summary)

'For decades, researchers have investigated what reading affords us, whether “us” means individuals or communities. Their research points to the benefits reading offers in terms of physical and mental health, education, and, perhaps most of all, empathic attunement to other people, and to other times, places, cultures and traditions.' (Introduction)

'Jessica Au has been appearing on the Australian literary scene for quite some time now. I first noticed her work in the noughties: short fictions published in Overland and Wet Ink, stories with well-crafted sentences and engaging characters and an aesthetic that leaned toward stillness and dissociation.'  (Introduction)