Anthologies

Monday musings on Australian literature: Growing up [name the aspect] in Australia

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With my Japanese trip almost over, I’m posting just a quick – but nonetheless interesting, I hope – Monday Musings this week.

Anita Heiss, Growing up Aboriginal in AustraliaSome of you will have guessed what this title refers to; it’s to the little recent flurry of anthologies being published in Australia in which contributors write about growing up Asian, or Aboriginal, or name-a-specific-situation in, yes, Australia. I have read one of them, myself, Anita Heiss’s Growing up Aboriginal in Australia.

Here is a list of the books (as I’ve found), in publication date order:

Book CoverIt doesn’t take a genius to see that publisher Black Inc has got a stranglehold on the theme. You could be forgiven for being a bit cynical about bandwagons and such, except that Black Inc is a thoughtful, quality publisher, and the editors of these books are established people in their fields who have walked the talk. They have significant reputations which establish their credentials and which, I presume, they’d want to maintain. (I don’t think I’m being naive here.)

Also, in one case at least, the Disabled one, it was the editor who approached the publisher to do the book (presumably, of course, on the back of the series to date). Black Inc’s publisher Kirstie Innes-Will was apparently delighted that Findlay approached them. Innes-Will says:

Part of the strength of the Growing Up series is the way it has evolved organically, championed by editors from different communities. The way these books have been embraced by readers shows how much representation matters. Growing Up Disabled will be an invaluable contribution to that tradition.

Book coverIf you believe, as I do, that reading can open your mind to the lives and experiences of others and therefore help you understand people better, then these books (if as good as the one I have read) are worth publishing. And, if you believe, as I do, that reading about your own experience can help you understand your own life, can help you manage your own life, can perhaps even help you survive your own life, then these books (with the same proviso) are worth publishing.

Modern short stories, 1929-style

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Pock, Modern short storiesAs I continue to clear out my aunt’s house, I keep finding little treasures. Most I move on. There are only so many little treasures, after all, that you can dwell on, let alone keep, but an old book of short stories? Of course, that captured my attention. Titled Modern short stories, it was my aunt’s school text around 1947. It edition date is actually 1929, and it belongs to a series of books, The Kings* treasures of literature, which was edited by Sir A T Quiller Couch*. Modern short stories was edited by Guy N. Pocock, who was “a novelist and educationist” according to the Wikipedia entry for his son Tom!

It contains twelve short stories, but I haven’t yet read them. I’m writing this post for other reasons. One is that my aunt wrote in the front of the book “Katherine Mansfield wrote good short stories”! Presumably the recommendation of her Methodist Ladies College teacher. Mansfield is not included in the anthology, although a couple of women (unknown to me) are. The book also has “Questions and suggestions” for each story at the back. The first story is “The lost god” by John Russell. Heard of him? I haven’t. Anyhow, one of the questions/suggestions for this story is:

“Good God!” breathed Bartlett. “He couldn’t get out!”

Explain this.

I think I’ll have to read this. In my search to find out who John Russell was I found a 2013 post on a blog called Pulp Flakes which describes itself as being about “Pulp magazines, authors and their stories. Adventure and Detective pulps”. According to the blogger, this story, written in 1917, was made into a film, The sea god. The blogger says that the story is “about an explorer who becomes a god. A standard pulp trope, you might say, and yet this has an unexpected ending. Or is it a beginning?”. One of the commenters calls it “one of the best short stories ever written”!

But, enough of that digression. I want to move on to my main reason for writing this post, Pocock’s introduction. Pocock commences by pondering how many short stories find their way into print. “Cataracts … come pouring out, monthly, weekly, daily, even hourly, from the American and English Press”, he says. And there are many others which are rejected. Of the thousands published, he asks, “how extraordinarily few are really worth the reading and writing – how extraordinarily few can be called great!” This, however, is not as extraordinary as it would appear, he continues, because “a great short story is a very difficult artistic achievement”. Of course, the stories he has chosen for this anthology are, he reassures us, “very good indeed”.

And so, in his introduction, he shares his ideas about “what constitutes a really good short story”. I’m going to dot point them:

  • it must be a story, that is, he says, there must be a plot – “however slight” (I like this qualification) – by which he means “some kind of development and crisis”. Otherwise, he suggests, it will be a sketch, a little snapshot from life or imagination”. To explain this, he describes going to “the ‘Pictures'”. (Interesting, given that going to the movies was still a fairly new thing at this time.) A sketch, he says, is like Pathé’s Gazette or Scenes from wild life, which are “just scenes”, while a short story is like Deadwood Dick or The adventures of Sherlock Holmes, because these comprise “a more or less artistic arrangement of scenes and situations developing to a climax”. What fascinates me about this is that he was clearly gearing his thoughts to young people – school students – by relating short stories to something they might know and enjoy. He was, in other words, “an educationist” as Wikipedia says.
  • it must be short, though there are, he admits, such things as “long short stories … a kind of literary dachshund”! Love it. Generally, though, they should be “brief and to the point”, ranging from a few hundred to two or three thousand words. In a short story, he continues, “there must be no padding out, no word-spinning. Every epithet, every phrase, every sentence should bear in some way upon the plot, character or atmosphere”. I think this is one of the reasons short stories are a joy to read. You really have to think closely about every thing the author writes.
  • if it’s an action story, the narrative must be rapid. This doesn’t have to be “breathless”, he says, but the sequence of events needs to be “swift and sustained”. And if it’s a more subtle, psychological story, the narrative still needs to move “rapidly”. There cannot be “loitering about and explaining the situation”. This is why short stories can be a challenge to read. If things aren’t explained, you really have to read all those words carefully – see the above point – to work out what’s going on!
  • we expect a consistent tone he says. He then discusses tone, such as how pathos is maintained or different sorts of humour injected, but he doesn’t really expand further on our “expectation”. I think he’s right, though. It’s the consistency of tone that tends to drive a short story on and give it much of its punch. When I think of my favourite short stories, it’s often not so much the actual story I remember as the feeling I’m left with, and this is usually created by the tone.

He then becomes a bit descriptive. He talks about “stories of Imagination”. The imagination can be “fanciful” taking us into “a world that lies beyond our everyday experience”, or “scientific” which may be beyond our experience but not beyond “possibility”. Stories, too, can convey an atmosphere of mystery (that is, be strange or haunting) or a sense of remoteness (that is, of happening, far away or long ago). “It is Style”, he says, “that works this magic; the personality of the author coming through”. I think I see “style” being broader than this – as also incorporating tone, pacing, characterisation etc – but perhaps I am misreading him.

Finally, he refers to characters, saying that

Their tongue betrayeth them. Either they are the real thing, or they are the author dressed up in borrowed and unfamiliar garb, which will deceive nobody.

The stories in this anthology, he says, are convincing – even those that are “most fanciful” – a qualification which suggests to me that he is a little wary of the “fanciful”? Then again, as one who tends to be wary of the “fanciful” myself, I understand where he’d coming from!

I’d love to hear what short story writers and fans think of his assessments.

* Kings has no apostrophe on the title page, and Quiller Couch is not hyphenated, though Wikipedia hyphenates it.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Annual anthologies

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This post would possibly be better done at the end of the year given that its subject – annual anthologies – relates most commonly to end-of-year publishing. However, not all such anthologies are published at year’s end, and, anyhow, I was inspired to write this post because my reading group is about to do one of these publications. Why not strike while the inspiration is upon me?

I’m going to share just a few that I’ve come across in recent years – ordered by publisher.

Black Inc

BestOf2009PoemsBlackIncMelbourne publisher Black Inc is the company which has made, in recent years anyhow, the biggest contribution to this form. I’m not sure when they started their “Best Australian” series but I’ve found titles going back to 2007 at least. They currently publish three annual editions: Best Australian stories, Best Australian poems and Best Australian essays. I’ve received, or given as gifts, various of these volumes over the years. Their editors change regularly, though not necessarily annually, so, for example, the 2016 edition of Best Australian stories will be selected by Charlotte Wood (whose The natural way of things won this year’s Stella Prize, among other awards). Previous editions have been edited by writers like Amanda Lohrey and Kim Scott. Recent Best Australian poems have been edited by poets Geoff Page, Lisa Gorton and Robert Adamson, and recent Best Australian essays by essayists Geordie Williamson and Robert Manne. These three annual anthologies are books that many of us Australians start looking for as the year draws to an end – and they do make good Christmas gifts for the reader who has read everything!

Griffith Review

The Queensland-based literary quarterly, the Griffith Review, published for several years (issues 26, 30, 34, 38 and 42) an Annual Fiction Edition (though the first one was called the Fiction Issue). The last of these, issue 42 published in 2013, was edited by Griffith Review’s editor Julianne Schultz and author Carmel Bird, and contained stories by recognised writers including Cate Kennedy, Arnold Zable, Tony Birch, Marion Halligan, Margo Lanagan and Bruce Pascoe. These editions focus on fiction, as their name implies, but they also include a smattering of pieces written in other forms, such as essays and poems.

However, in the last couple of years, Griffith Review seems to have abandoned this series, and has published instead what it calls The Novella Project. Numbered II (issue 46) and III (issue 50), these built on what was initially a one-off edition, issue 38 published in 2012. The novellas published were chosen from submissions to novella competitions run by the Review. One of last year’s winners was Nick Earls whom I featured in an earlier post this week. Issue 50 was published in October last year. I have no idea what Griffith Review plans for its last issue of 2016, but it would be lovely if it were a similarly focused “annual”.

Margaret River Press

Richard Rossiter, Knitting

Courtesy: Margaret River Press

For four or five years now, Western Australia’s Margaret River Press has been running an annual short story competition, the conclusion of which is the publication of the winning and shortlisted titles in an anthology, usually edited by the judges. I have reviewed, and thoroughly enjoyed, a couple of these anthologies, the 2013 titled Knitting and other stories, edited by Richard Rossiter, and the 2014 one titled The trouble with flying and other stories, edited by Richard Rossiter and Susan Midalia.

The competition attracts both new and established short story writers. In 2015, they received 323 entries, of which 24 were shortlisted for inclusion in the anthology. This initiative represents a wonderful commitment by a small publisher to the short story form.

New South Books

New South Wales based New South Books contributes something a little different to this annual anthology arena – and this is the one my reading group will be discussing next month. I’m talking their Best Australian Science Writing anthology. We will be reading the 2015 edition which was edited by science journalist Bianca Nogrady whose book about death, No end, I’ve reviewed. The 2015 edition is the fifth they’ve published but, not surprising, given my main reading interests, I had not heard of it. However, I’m looking forward to being introduced to, as its promo says, “the knowledge and insight of Australia’s brightest thinkers in examining the world around us”. Its subjects apparently range from “our obsession with Mars to the mating habits of fish”. I’m intrigued. One thing I know is that I’ll be introduced to a whole bunch of writers I’ve never read before! Like Black Inc, New South Books is already promoting this year’s edition. It’s being edited by Jo Chandler, and promotion for it says:

Good writing about science can be moving, funny, exhilarating or poetic, but it will always be honest and rigorous about the research that underlies it.

Do you read annuals? If so, I’d love to know which one/s and why. 

(PS I should add here that I did buy, about a decade ago, one of the O Henry Prize Stories anthologies. It was great reading.)

 

Christos Tsiolkas in Meanjin’s The Canberra Issue

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Meanjin Canberra Issue 2013

Courtesy: Meanjin

I indicated in my recent review of Meanjin‘s special Canberra issue that I would write another post or two on the issue. This is one of those posts. It may, in fact, be the only one, for who knows where the spirit will lead me next? Right now though, I want to devote a post to the second last piece in the volume, “Me and my country, Where to Now?”. It’s a conversation between writer Heather Taylor Johnson and Christos Tsiolkas whose novel The slap was one of the first I reviewed in this blog. While the novel was well received critically – won awards and was short/longlisted for others – it was not universally liked. The Wikipedia article on the novel quotes Commonwealth Writer’s Prize judge, Nicholas Hasluck, describing it as “a controversial and daring novel”. It was that …

Before I continue, I should say that this piece has a fairly tenuous link to Canberra – Tsiolkas lived here for a short time in the 1990s I understand – but its inclusion is justified, I think, for the relevance of the ideas it covers. I don’t plan to summarise the whole conversation, interesting though it is, but pick out a couple of points that got my attention – and they mostly relate to The slap.

Courtesy: Allen & Unwin

Courtesy: Allen & Unwin

Johnson commences by asking Tsiolkas about the mini-series adaptation of The slap. While recognising that the mini-series was not his work, but the work of those who had “translated and transformed” it for another medium, Tsiolkas talks of his overall intention:

I felt a certain responsibility with the screening of the series, a hope that whatever criticism people had of it, that it would be understood as an authentic voice of contemporary, multicultural urban Australia. I share the frustration of so many people of immigrant heritage in this country who have rarely seen their lives portrayed with any complexity or realism on the Australian screen. I also know that there would be people of that experience who either don’t read fiction or can’t read fiction in English and for whom the moving-image media are the only source for story and representation. I wanted people to be angry, frustrated, enraged by The slap, but I also wanted their arguments with it to be based on an appreciation that the representations were neither patronising nor sentimental. My own view is that the series succeeded in doing that.

Although focused on the miniseries, this statement is also, I think, a manifesto for the novel. It’s a warts-and-all story of people, most of whom happen to be immigrants or minorities in some way, getting on with their often flawed lives.

One of the themes that came through to me in the novel was that of violence. I felt Tsiolkas was saying that violence lies just beneath the surface of many human relationships. Later in the conversation he talks about the principles and philosophies, the “politics”, that drive him – feminism, racial civil rights, sexual liberation, post-colonial and communist. A complicated and, as he admits, sometimes contradictory bunch of ideas. He says:

I think that one of the drives I have in my writing is to express the complexity and violence of this tension. It means that though gender and sexuality are among the themes and ideas I explore in all my work, I can’t give myself over to a liberationist idea that the transformation of the individual can resolve these tensions and contradictions.

Hmm … this is pretty complex thinking methinks and I’m not sure I was able to articulate his ideas at this deeper philosophical level, but I sensed something going on and this helps explain it (to me, anyhow). He continues to say that he believes that “sexuality and the body constantly undermine our attempts at mastery and transformation”. This brought to mind the terrible recent rape cases in India and some angry discussions I’ve just read on Facebook about the current court case concerning the gang rape of the 16-year-old girl in the USA. We are not making much progress.

There is so much in this conversation that I’d love to talk about, such as his comment that much “Anglophone and European contemporary literature is moribund”. He argues that the most electric writing is coming from outside the Anglo-European centre. That must, I suppose, pose a challenge to him given his background. But, I’ll move on.

Johnson asks him about controversy, particularly in relation to The slap. Again his response is complex, but his main point is that “I want to pose questions that are unsettling or troubling”. One of the things that bothered me about the conversations surrounding The slap was that people focused on “the slap” itself  – as in do you or don’t you hit a child, particularly one not your own – and not on the social, cultural and, yes, political issues inherent in the relationships involved. The fact that “the slap” plot is resolved way before the end of the novel tells us that this issue of hitting a child is not Tsiolkas’ main point. In fact, he says in this conversation with Johnson that “the language of moral absolutes … may be having a pernicious effect on much of contemporary writing”. And then he says:

I have given up reading blogs because so many people are dismissing work because they ‘don’t like the characters’ or because the resolution of a book is not neat, is not easy. We are reading for confirmation of ourselves rather than to challenge ourselves and I think that is a real danger.

He has more to say on issues that interest me – including Aboriginal dispossession and public education – but I think I’ll finish here, because I need to think …

in Meanjin 1, 2013, The Canberra Issue
University of Melbourne
pp. 178-188
ISBN: 9780522861938

(Review copy supplied by Meanjin)

Meanjin’s The Canberra Issue (Review)

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Meanjin Canberra Issue 2013

Courtesy: Meanjin

Zora Sanders writes in her Editorial for Meanjin‘s Canberra Issue that Canberra has (or, is it had) a reputation for being The National Capital of Boredom. This is just one of the many less-than-flattering epithets regularly applied to Canberra: A Cemetery with Lights, Fat Cat City, and the pervasive, A City without a Soul. For me though it’s simply Home … a home I chose back in the mid-70s when I applied for my first professional job at the National Library of Australia. I was consequently pleased when Meanjin offered me their special Canberra edition to review.

Sanders describes the issue as being “full of the usual eclectic mix of fact, fiction and poetry” and says it aims to “offer a taste of Canberra as it is now, 100 years after its founding, as viewed by the people who live there, who’ve left there and who never meant to find themselves there in the first place”. The result is something that’s not a hagiography, if you can apply such a word to a city, but that offers a thoughtful look at Canberra from diverse angles – political, historical, social, personal.

With the exception of poetry which is interspersed throughout, the issue is organised straightforwardly by form, rather than by theme or chronology. This is not to say, however, that there is no sense of an ordering hand. The first essay, for example, is, appropriately, Paul Daley’s “Territorial disputes” which explores Canberra’s complex and sometimes controversial indigenous heritage, including the thorny question concerning Canberra’s name. Is it derived from “Ngambri”, which means the “cleavage between the breasts of Black Mountain and Mount Ainslie“?

The issue includes a Meanjin Papers insert comprising an essay by ACT historian David Headon titled “The genius and gypsy: Walt and Marion Griffin in Australia and India”. So much has been written about the Griffins over the decades, and particularly this year, that it’s a challenge to present them in a handful of pages. Headon’s approach is to focus on the Griffins’ idealism, on what drove them to do what they did, and bypass the complex story of what happened to the plan. That story is explored a little later by Chris Hammer in his essay “A secret map of Canberra”. Griffin, like the 19th century American poet Walt Whitman, was, Headon writes, inspired by the prospect of “a prosperous egalitarian future for the new democracy in the south”. He planned his “ideal city” to serve such a nation. It didn’t, as we know, quite turn out that way, but I love that our city has such passion in its genes.

Anthologies are tricky to write about, particularly one as varied as this (despite its seemingly singular subject). The main sections are Essays, Fiction, Memoir and Poetry. There’s also a Conversation and a Gallery – and an opening section titled Perspectives. These pieces provide a fittingly idiosyncratic introduction to the volume. First is novelist Andrew Croome (whose Document Z I reviewed a couple of years ago). He writes of the 2003 fire – Canberra’s worst disaster – and its impact on the observatory at Mt Stromlo. There was a terrible human cost to this disaster but, without denying that, Croome takes a more cosmic view, and turns our eyes to the future. It’s nicely done. Writer Lorin Clarke follows Croome with her cheekily titled perspective “The love that dare not speak its name”. She ferrets out, without actually using the word, some of Canberra’s soul, seeing it in small spaces rather than showy institutions and in, if I read her correctly, the gaps that appear between carefully planned intentions and reality. The third perspective comes from a previous Meanjin editor, Jim Davidson, who, like Clarke and other writers in the issue, starts with the negatives –  “a public service town” etc etc – but suggests that “the city is beginning to acquire a patina”. He argues, rather logically really, that Canberra is still young. Other planned cities, like Washington DC and Istanbul, have got “into their stride” and Canberra probably will too.

These perspectives – and the way they test Canberra’s image against reality – set the tone for the rest of the issue. I’m not going bore you – though the contributions themselves are far from boring – by summarising every piece. There is something here for everyone – and they show that the real Canberra is more than roundabouts and public servants. Dorothy Johnston‘s short story “Mrs B”, though set in Melbourne, reminds us of the hidden world of “massage parlours” and migrant workers, while Geoff Page‘s poem, “The ward is new”, addresses mental illness. Michael Thorley’s poem “Bronzed Aussies” reveres some of Canberra’s (and Australia’s) top poets, AD Hope, David Campbell and Judith Wright, while award-winning novelist Marian Halligan‘s memoir “Constructing a city, Constructing a life” recounts how a move to Canberra for a year or so turned into half a century and still counting. Several pieces describe Canberra’s natural beauty, including Melanie Joosten’s bittersweet short story, “The sky was herding disappointments”. And Alan Gould’s poem “The blether”, pointedly but wittily the last piece in the volume, suggests we could do with less aimless chatter and more of the “sweet unsaid”.

Of course, as this is Canberra, there has to be some politics. I particularly enjoyed Gideon Haigh’s essay, “The Rise and Rise of the Prime Minister”. Looking at the recent development of prime ministerial libraries à la America’s tradition of presidential libraries, he argues that the political landscape is being personalised, resulting in a shift in focus from ideology to leaders and their personalities.

Many of the pieces interested me, and I plan to write separately about one or two of them in future posts, so I’ll end here with architects Gerard O’Connell and Nugroho Utomo. In their essay “Canberra LAB – a mythical biography; or the art of showing up”, they say:

One has to understand that Canberra is a dream. It doesn’t exist. It is an ideal unrealised. A half-finished work on the way to becoming a masterpiece.

I like that. Meanjin has compiled an anthology that shows, as contributor Yolande Norris puts it, how “rich and strange” Canberra’s history is. It’s hard for me to be objective, but I’d say this volume has enough variety and good writing to appeal to a wide range of readers – whether or not they know or care about Canberra.

Meanjin, Vol 72 No.1 (Autumn 2013); or,
Meanjin 1, 2013, The Canberra Issue
University of Melbourne
191pp.
ISBN: 9780522861938

(Review copy supplied by Meanjin)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Canberra’s centenary

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The invisible thread, by Irma Gold

Cover (Courtesy: Irma Gold and Halstead Press)

In 2013 Canberra, Australia‘s national capital, will celebrate its centenary. A whole raft of events and activities has been planned to keep us busy and buzzing all year – and I look forward to them – but for me, a reader, one of the most exciting projects inspired by the centenary is The invisible thread. It’s an anthology of fiction, non-fiction and poetry by writers, past and present, who have had an association with Canberra.

Some 75 writers are represented. Seventy-five! Even I, with my now rather long history in the capital, am surprised by the number, which perhaps gives you a hint to the meaning of the title. Robyn Archer, the Creative Director of the Centenary, writes in the foreword that much about Canberra is hidden or invisible but, she says, “just because you don’t see it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there”. Like, for example, service stations! We do have them, contrary to popular opinion, we just like to keep them tucked away a little! Bill Bryson also noticed this feature of Canberra in his book Down Under. He wrote:

It’s a very strange city, in that it’s not really a city at all, but rather an extremely large park with a city hidden [my emphasis] in it. It’s all lawns and trees and hedges and a big ornamental lake [Lake Burley Griffin] – all very agreeable, just a little unexpected.

Hence The invisible thread!

Now, I haven’t yet read the book, having only acquired my copy last week, but I’ve given it a good look. And within its pages I’ve found many friends – personal and literary. Some are writers I have reviewed in this blog over the last three years or so, namely Francesca Rendle-Short, Alan Gould, Geoff Page, Alex Miller, Nigel Featherstone and Marion Halligan. Others are classic writers I’ve mentioned in various posts, particularly the Monday Musings series. These include some wonderful women, Judith Wright, Rosemary Dobson, Kate Grenville, Miles Franklin and the collaborative team M Barnard Eldershaw. There are writers I’ve known for reasons external to their writing, like Michael Thorley and Sarah St Vincent Welch. There are young writers like the internationally published Jack Heath and rap artist Omar Musa, and older writers like historian Bill Gammage whose The biggest estate on earth won this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. And there are some of the grand men of Australian letters, like the poets AD Hope and Les Murray and the historian Manning Clark. If all these don’t tempt readers, I’m not sure who will, except perhaps those I haven’t mentioned!

The book is divided into four sections: Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards, Pts 1 and 2, and Looking In, Looking Out, Pts 1 & 2. Editor Irma Gold*, whose collection of short stories I reviewed earlier this year, describes the breakdown as “open-ended and kaleidoscopic”, and says that while Canberra features in the writings,

it is not the headline act. Rather, it supplies the invisible thread that links writers to each other, as one-time or full-time Canberrans, and to everyone who call Australia home. Like writers everywhere, the writers showcased here are looking both in and out, backwards and forwards, conveying the world through the lens of their experience.

Each of these sections is introduced with a delightful cartoon by Judy Horacek, one of my favourite cartoonists.

I plan to return to this book, when I’ve had time to digest it more, so I’ll finish here on a little anecdote. In 1988, some good friends and I started a reading group, one that will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. Our initial focus was Australian women writers, and so in those early years we read Marion Halligan, Kate Grenville and more. We were Canberra women readers. However, also in 1988, a group of Canberra women writers (which included Marion Halligan and was known as the “Seven Writers”) produced a collection of short stories titled Canberra Tales. Several of those writers are included in this anthology, including Dorothy Johnston. Johnston’s story in that collection, “The Boatman of Lake Burley Griffin”, is also in this anthology. Its opening sentence is:

To look at the lake, you’d think nothing dramatic, scarcely anything human happened there.

But how wrong you’d be …

Irma Gold (ed)
The invisible thread
Braddon: Halstead Press, 2012
256pp.
ISBN: 9781920831967

* To hear interviews with some of the anthology’s authors, check out Irma Gold’s You Tube page