Housing Climate: From Plastic to Concrete - by Miriam McGarry
Nonfiction Miriam McGarry Nonfiction Miriam McGarry

Housing Climate: From Plastic to Concrete - by Miriam McGarry

From Tasmanian fires to Queensland floods, Miriam McGarry wonders how we will find home in an age of climate instability:
… I was reclaiming a pair of jeans I had loaned her, collateral from the era we had share-housed, when Jack shouted from the bathroom, ‘Look at this sky!’ It appeared as if the entire mountain was on fire. ‘Hobart blue’ was replaced by a brutal and swelling terracotta. A closing barricade. A shroud …

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Go Get Boy – by Alison Flett
Fiction Alison Flett Fiction Alison Flett

Go Get Boy – by Alison Flett

WINNER, OLGA MASTERS SHORT STORY AWARD 2020

I’m The Fetcher, Go Get Boy, barrelling along in the back of Darren’s ute, riding high on the highest pile of drydry firewood, gunna burn so good. I’m one of three, that’s me, that’s who I am, and the three of us are building one good fire. Others are building their own fires but ours’ll be biggest, ours’ll be best, ours’ll burnburnburn forever. No-one’ll forget us when they see our blaze …

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Thirst - by Rick Morton
Nonfiction Rick Morton Nonfiction Rick Morton

Thirst - by Rick Morton

By the end of 2004, when I was graduating from my regional state high school, a person could almost walk clear across the dam that supplied our entire region with water … In many ways, I was a child of drought …

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The Voices of the Magpies - by Laura McPhee-Browne
Fiction Laura McPhee-Browne Fiction Laura McPhee-Browne

The Voices of the Magpies - by Laura McPhee-Browne

For Elizabeth Jolley; in response to ‘A New World’
I am in the sick bed four days before a visitor. There have been trips to the toilet, and watery meals eaten whilst a tiny television sounds in the far corner of the room, dangling as if a puppet. But no one has come to see if I have settled in …

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Endlings - by Harriet Riley
Nonfiction Harriet Riley Nonfiction Harriet Riley

Endlings - by Harriet Riley

In 1996 a correspondence published in Nature coined the term ‘endling’ to refer to an animal that was the last of its species. It’s a fantastical word, like something out of a fairytale. An endling lives deep in a dark forest beneath distant mountains, and can only been seen at midnight once every hundred years. In a way, this isn’t so far from the truth. Every now and then there’s a sighting of an animal, like the Australian night parrot, long thought extinct. But just as often we know exactly when and where the last member of a species died …

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Thirty Pieces - by A Frances Johnson
Poetry A Frances Johnson Poetry A Frances Johnson

Thirty Pieces - by A Frances Johnson

You hang, peerless, around the edges /
of friendship. Want more than to swing /
in a biblical sunset, play villain in a /
cloud-hammered story with ‘good cop’ /
twisting your head into the back of a car …

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The Tick Tock Killer - by Alex Cothren
Fiction Alex Cothren Fiction Alex Cothren

The Tick Tock Killer - by Alex Cothren

Rodriguez, suddenly looking pale: God damn. I sure hope we don’t find anything like that.
Close shot as the make-up brush cuts short its hula. The Make-up Girl’s face dips into the mirror. Dark, hard eyes.
Make-up Girl: You fucking better find something like that. I need this job, okay? My dog’s on dialysis …

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Swift Parrot x Dark Mofo - by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn

Swift Parrot x Dark Mofo - by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn

Sex and death on the eve of the winter solstice? I gulp as the ogoh-ogoh looms over me, ready to prey on my fears. The usually diminutive swift parrot (or Lathamus discolor) is rendered in behemoth glory as a papier-mâché Balinese sculpture. Beneath the parrot’s clawed foot is a small parcel made of palm leaf: a canang sari …

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Down to a Fine Art - by Elizabeth Flux
Nonfiction Elizabeth Flux Nonfiction Elizabeth Flux

Down to a Fine Art - by Elizabeth Flux

… The best way to work out what and who is and isn’t essential is to imagine the world with it stripped away. Yes, I want to keep breathing and I want my heart to keep beating, but I also want to exist as more than a body moving through a silent utilitarian world …

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The Intimacy of Daily Life: The News is the Weather - by Rosie Flanagan and Miriam McGarry
Arts Features Rosie Flanagan and Miriam McGarry Arts Features Rosie Flanagan and Miriam McGarry

The Intimacy of Daily Life: The News is the Weather - by Rosie Flanagan and Miriam McGarry

Tasmania and Iceland sit at almost opposite ends of the world; remote islands of disparate wilderness that are as distant as the 17,000 kilometres that separate them. The premise behind our application for the publishing residency there was simple: islands, as books, have delineated boundaries – and yet, the identities of both are formed through interactions and exchanges that extend beyond the lines of a map or the borders of a page. We wrote to Skaftfell, who run the Printing Matter program, and told them that we intended to publish an island …

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The Wolves - by Josephine Rowe
Fiction Josephine Rowe Fiction Josephine Rowe

The Wolves - by Josephine Rowe

How was it? We grew up inside those crumbling estate houses, where kikuyu grass knuckled through indifferent brickwork, through the husks of cars, and still we shot up like miraculous gymnosperms to various kinds of fame …

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Pink Sun - by Toby Fitch
Poetry Toby Fitch Poetry Toby Fitch

Pink Sun - by Toby Fitch

… at peak hour / pink sun / black sky / you can return now / for eternity / ’cause you’ve stood up with the Hellsong / hung loose and come out the other / sideline without a hose / to fan the arson online …

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