For the Voiceless and the Invisible
SUSAN JAMES profiles the life and work of Ann Petry: ‘She wrote about black lives, but her characters weren’t heroes or martyrs. They were flawed. They struggled, and they were often desperate…’
Two Ears, Three Lucks: A Profile of Grace Paley
KATE JONES profiles the career of Grace Paley: ‘The stories she left behind tell the tales of the everyday, ordinary people, often women, who live and breathe both on and off the page.’
Reading Saadat Hassan Manto in an Age of Dislocation
FARAH AHAMED considers the life and work of Saadat Hassan Manto: ‘His characters are not defined by the way they look, but by what they are doing in the present moment. His descriptions are not sensory observations but rather unsentimentally observed settings for particular events.’
Under The Surface
SOPHIE REID reveals the unsettling depths in Daphne du Maurier’s short stories: ‘… they offer complete worlds, ask questions, and leave you wanting more. Many explore themes of what it is to be human, the darkness in our minds, and the darker sides of life.’
A Littery and Eddicated Man
MIKE SMITH delves into Stacy Aumonier’s short story ‘A Man of Letters’ and discovers where this writer’s intellectual standards really lie: ‘He sets himself a difficult task, because his eponymous hero is a working class chap with atrocious spelling and a weak grasp on language…’
Tales of a Traveller
Longlisted in the 2016 Competition, GINA CHALLEN discovers Australia through the tales of Louis de Bernières: ‘The tales themselves are straightforward in the telling, uncomplicated, and de Bernières’ simple language creates a style that resonates with the rhythms and cadence of the spoken word…’
Beyond the Barren Landscape
Longlisted in the 2016 Competition, NICOLE MANSOUR appreciates the murkier side of Australia in Elizabeth Harrower’s A Few Days in the Country: ‘Few Australian writers, in my opinion, traverse these dim corners of ambiguity, or unearth this more uncommon caliginosity from far beneath its exterior, in either their characters or their writing – Murray Bail and Gerard Murnane are notable exceptions. Elizabeth Harrower is another…’
There Is Another Way
Author ERINNA METTLER explores the various options available for publishing a collection of short stories today: ‘Sadly, many agents don’t take on short story collections because publishers won’t read them … No matter, this is the way it is, so we will have to find a way around it…’
Dance, old scarecrow, she said, while I dancing with you.
Longlisted in the 2016 Competition, DAVID BUTLER finds a distinctive universe, the human condition and entertainment in Eudora Welty’s ‘A Worn Path’: ‘It is a world contiguous with that of the Brer Rabbit stories of Uncle Remus and, like them, it has something of the quality of myth…’
Writing a ‘Topsy-Turvey’ World
Longlisted in the 2016 Competition, ELEANOR FITZSIMONS profiles the life and short story writing of ‘New Woman’ George Egerton: ‘Egerton’s women reject their proscribed roles as guardians of morality, and refuse to engage in the heteronormative courtship plots familiar to readers of the time. Instead, they cooperate with other women, often overcoming constructed ethnic and social divisions in pursuit of agency and self-determination…’