Are you there? Can you forgive me? [Book review]

Review of: Patrick West and Om Prakash Dwivedi (eds), The World to Come. Spineless Wonders, Strawberry Hills, New South Wales, 2014. ISBN 9781925052046

Writing and researching (in) the regions

The special issue of TEXT on writing and researching (in) the regions provides a robust portrait of the ways in which regional Australia is imagined, produced, and negotiated by writers and scholars working in a range of settings broadly understood as regional. The writing and research here gather around a range of themes: writing (in) the regions; teaching (in) the regions; and publishing (in) the regions. Together, these works contribute to the ongoing negotiations around how to understand, interpret, work within and nurture regional writing, teaching and research

An interview with Nike Sulway

Nike Sulway’s latest book, Rupetta (2013), won the James Tiptree, Jr Award for a work of science fiction or fantasy that explores or expands our understanding of gender/sexuality. Rupetta begins four hundred years ago in rural France, where a young woman creates a part human, part mechanical woman, who she calls Rupetta. Bound to each of the women who wind her heart, the novel narrates the miracles and tragedies of Rupetta’s existence. The novel is also told from the point of view of Henri, a history student who yearns for her own mechanical heart. But as Henri uncovers the history of the Salt Lane women – mothers and daughters whose lives were shaped by Rupetta’s – she questions the very truth upon which she has always understood the world and her place in it. Nike’s first novel, The Bone Flute (2001), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Awards and won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Emerging Queensland Author. Her other books are What the Sky Knows (2005), a children’s picture book illustrated by Stella Danalis, and the novel The True Green of Hope  (2005) (as N.A. Bourke). Nike has a PhD in Creative Writing from Griffith University and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Queensland. She also blogs at Perilous Adventures. This interview was conducted by email in June 2015

Night drive [Poem]

Night Drive is a poem

'His unspoken natural centre': James Tiptree Jr as the 'Other I'

Throughout literary history, a number of women writers have taken on male nom de plumes. Critics and other observers have noted the ways in which these names have been adopted for pragmatic reasons: in order to provide women with avenues for publication that enhance their reputations as (male) writers, and protect their identities as (female) daughters, sisters, wives and mothers. Alice B. Sheldon created James Tiptree, Jr in 1967. In this paper, I argue that Tiptree, or ‘Tip’ as he was known to his friends, was not merely a nom de plume. Rather, Tip was a fully realised identity—Alice’s alter ego, or ‘Other I’—a well-known and respected writer who maintained epistolary relationships with other writers, editors, publishers, and readers. In Seymour Chatman’s, Coming to Terms, he writes that the act of reading is “ultimately an exchange between real human beings, [which] entails two intermediate constructs” (Chatman, 75). This paper examines the ways Tip’s identity, as revealed in his creative works and in his letters, disrupts the gender-normative structure of this ‘exchange’, particularly in terms of the assumed correlation between the gender of the Implied Author and that of the ‘real human being’ he is (mis)recognised as being

Tell me, whacher, is it winter? [Short story]

This short story explores the theme of inter-generational, or transgenerational trauma, in particular in a family who lived through the Honger Winter during World War Two. The narrative is an intertextual variant of various fairy tales, including ATU327A Hansel and Grete

Her lover's golden hair [Short story]

Lily's hand is not resting carelessly in her lap. Lily's sandy feet are not up on the dashboard. Lily's salty hair is not blowing into a knotted, lovely mess