Selected Writing
Welcome to Bellevue
2020, Grattan Street Press, Melbourne, Australia
’Welcome to Bellevue’ was the first title published in GSP’s original fiction collection.
“Welcome to Bellevue, where the mountains meet the sea…”
Harry awakes on a ferry with no memory of how he came to be there. The boat is bound for Bellevue, a place he has never heard of. When he goes ashore, his attempts to leave are thwarted.
Feeling trapped and alone, Harry gradually gets to know and trust some of the locals, and hopes he is on the way to learning the mystery that holds him in this strange seaside town.
But then a series of murders grips Bellevue, threatening Harry’s new friend Xanthe, and renewing Harry’s desperation for answers.
Books
Short Stories
in The Saturday Paper, 25 May, 2024
Everything was warm at the start. I was one with everything, like a pizza with all the toppings. A joke that wouldn’t make sense for aeons.
This was the time of the All, when I shared my pulse with the Earth.
2023, Kalliope X, Issue Five: ‘Summer 2023’
The morning of January 12th, 2020, began as a regular day for surfer Wynand Brouwer, who spent the morning in the water at Milnerton Lighthouse, in Cape Town. Just a few hours later, Brouwer was admitted to the Groote Schuur Hospital, reporting symptoms of slurred speech and an itchy, pins and needles sensation in his tongue.
2023, In Reverie, Issue one:
I’ve never gotten used to the liquid breakfast, but it’s the only way to get all the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and steroids you need for a healthy body — and a half-way healthy mind — without an all-day IV. My father was basically held together with spackle and Band-Aids by the time he hit fifty. He was forever complaining about his bad knee, swollen prostate and herniated discs. I just noticed my first grey hair, so the shakes work, but eating through a straw doesn’t have the charm of pancakes.
2023, In swim meet lit mag, Issue four: ‘Flip’
The boat arrives at sunset, pulling in under a fruit salad sky. Pineapple, melon, grapefruit and mango, all layered under coconut clouds. The wind whips the waves up into a meringue froth, and I wonder if they eat pavlova in the Pacific. The boat bounces up alongside the dock and I move from fibreglass deck to wooden jetty, my stomach grumbling a thank you. Much longer, and I’m afraid I would have added my own gastrointestinal rainbow to the crystal water.
Buenos Aires
2022, in Resilience: a celebration of poetry, fiction and essays, Mascara Literary Review, 15th anniversary anthology, Ultimo Press, Sydney, Australia.
Resilience looks upwards to the ever-changing, ever-present skies, where fingers and fist touch the horizon. Resilience is often deeply imagined and hard won. Resilience, by turn, is fervent, supple, rhizomatic, generative. Like the beguiling evenness of an orchid, resilience is enduring and delicate.
To celebrate its 15th year Mascara Literary Review presents their first print anthology, featuring writing that addresses and explores the theme of resilience through fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. In this anthology, writers explore the multiplicity of resilience – rebellious and experimental, paving the way to reclaim, rewrite and amplify. Resilience offers a futuristic and promising gaze into the future: What does it look like? How did we get here? What have we lost and/or inherited?
Resilience is edited by Michelle Cahill, Monique Nair and Anthea Yang.
Ter-Mine-Nation Day
2022, in Meniscus Literary Journal, Volume 10, AAWP, Australia.
The beat of a helicopter’s blades kills the silence on our last morning as a country. I try to find it against the glaring blue sky, but with the sun overhead I have to squint. It’s little more than a dragonfly in the distance by the time I spot it. ‘Do you think they call them choppers because they cut up the sky?’ Ellie asks. ‘Machines like that have cut up the whole world.’
The Sting
2022, in [untitled] issue 10, Pinion Press Melbourne, Australia.
‘The Sting’ was awarded 2nd place for the [untitled] short story award (2022)
The lift stopped with a ding, followed by a too-long pause before the doors opened. Apparently it was an energy saving feature – super sustainable – but it made Jeanine nervous. That pause felt just a hair longer every time, like this might be the moment the doors decided it would be more efficient to just stay closed...
An exciting issue that is a collection of the [untitled] short story competition longlistees, which was judged by award-winning author and story wizard Laurie Steed. The issue features an editorial from Blaise van Hecke, and short stories by Shaun Allen, Ben Redwood, Daniel T. Car, Anna Miller, Natalie A. Vella, Nancy Podimane, Katrina Burge, Jane Downing, Seth Robinson, J.A. Gleeson, Mick Davidson, Rosemary Dickson, Megan Howden, Vicky Daddo, Bon-Wai Chou, Shaun Allen, and Tyler McPherson.
Honey Bear
2022, in Networks: Being a part and apart (2021), Sydney, Australia.
Our world is built around the people, groups and communities we surround ourselves with. They form networks of connections, beliefs and ideas that can help to shape the people we become. These networks have become vital in a time where lockdowns have pushed us apart, and reinforced the need to be a part of something whole.
This anthology examines the ways we find joy in lockdown, keep people and places alive through memory, and search for connection in an increasingly digital age. Featuring poetry, short stories and visual art, it introduces bold new voices that will command your attention and prompt you to think differently about the relationships that make everyday life worthwhile.
Watch Me
2021, in Everything, All at Once, Ultimo Press, Sydney, Australia.
’Watch Me’ was selected as the opening story for the Inaugural Ultimo Prize winners’ collection.
Endless sunshine bleaches the curtains and wears the nerves of a woman stuck inside. A chance encounter with a stranger changes the course of a life in small but significant ways. An imagined audience drives people to the extreme. A young woman wrestles with inheritance and loss.
Compiled from the winning entries of the 2021 Ultimo Prize, this collection represents Australia’s next generation of literary talent. Their work is forward-thinking and provocative, exciting and surprising. Beautifully designed by George Saad, Everything, All At Once is populated with characters seeking comfort and connection in an uncertain world.
Fire Sale
2021, in Intermissions, Grattan Street Press, Melbourne, Australia.
Intermissions is an anthology of over 60 original short stories, exploring the complexity of the human condition.
The collection brings together musings on love and loss, experimentation, isolation, suffering, intimacy and connection, environmental collapse and the Anthropocene.
Carefully curated by Grattan Street Press, this eclectic selection of stories from both Australian and international writers is haunting, uplifting, moving and absurd. We invite you to traverse its
pages to discover the diversity of voices reflective of an ever-changing world.
When the Birds Came Back
2021, in Earth Cries: The University of Sydney Anthology (2020), Sydney, Australia.
Climate change is here, and how we react in the present will alter the course of the future; we can no longer deny that this is a key challenge for our times. Over the past two years, Australia has seen its worst bushfire season in recorded history, extreme floods and a global pandemic that brought about a renewed appreciation of nature.
The contributors to this anthology tell powerful stories of devastation and hope. From chilling predictions of the future, to tree conservation movements in India, to an exchange between Siri and Alexa on environmental sustainability, writers and artists from the Sydney University community have come together to give voice to experiences of climate change, nature and the environment.
It’s never been more important to keep the conversation alive.
Fresh Air
2020, Aurealis Magazine #136, Melbourne, Australia.
The wind felt hot enough to break the skin. It blasted the exposed patch between the cuff of Corrie’s coat and her glove, warning of future blisters if she wasn’t careful.
‘Shit.’
She fumbled with her sleeve, stuffing it into her glove, then lifted her gaze to the east, and even through her goggles found herself squinting against the steady blast of wind. She looked out across the blackened hills and the sweep of dry earth that had once been bush. The fires had taken care of the eucalypts. Now, there was only a scattering of deadwood carcasses jammed into the ground… [Read more]
Publishing’s Catch 22 on ‘Timely’ and ‘Important’ Books
2023, in Kill Your Darlings Magazine
There are certain words that are used to describe literary titles released in Australia: they’re ‘timely’ and ‘important’, from ‘voices that need to be heard’. These are the books we’ll talk about with our friends and families. We’ll read their reviews in lit journals. We’ll go to see these authors on stage at writers’ festivals and eagerly await their next releases. But what does it mean to write a book like this?
[Read more]
Articles
‘Succession’ and the Disenchantment of the American Dream
2023, in Kill Your Darlings Magazine
Last Monday night—along with most of my friends, colleagues and a good chunk of Australia—I tuned in for the finale of Succession. It had followed an afternoon of discipline, with a self-imposed social media blackout as spoilers reigned supreme across American news outlets. Fortunately, I had practice. Late to the Succession party, I have been on a ‘Binge’ binge that would make Kendall proud, indulging for weeks now in an intense stream of American corporate conquest.
[Read more]
