The Third Angel of Chernobyl – by Carmel Bird
Nonfiction Carmel Bird Nonfiction Carmel Bird

The Third Angel of Chernobyl – by Carmel Bird

… I write this in February 2022, beginning on Valentine’s Day. The whole world, suffering from the pestilence of COVID, is focused on the question of whether Russia is or is not going to invade Ukraine, which has been a separate and troubled country since 1991. By 17 February, the suspense continues, and perhaps Russia will invade, perhaps it won’t. Naturally, the world watches on television as snow falls on the troops, on the tanks, on people in bright puffer jackets …

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Bombera – by Josefina Huq
Fiction Josefina Huq Fiction Josefina Huq

Bombera – by Josefina Huq

… Somebody asks her how it felt having her birthday on the day of the fire. What’s it matter? she says. Even starting a fire couldn’t get people to come. They laugh, and she tries to laugh hard enough so as not to feel hurt, thinking about that night. How she was across town and saw the firetrucks zoom down the main road, headed straight towards her wooden spot in the corner. The sirens cutting through the lyrics of Happy Birthday …

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A Year Without Mirrors – by Sarah Klenbort
Nonfiction Sarah Klenbort Nonfiction Sarah Klenbort

A Year Without Mirrors – by Sarah Klenbort

… my daughter Kaitlyn signed, ‘Stop!’
‘The ground,’ she pointed, ‘is moving’.
I looked into the pool of light from our torch and thought I was having an LSD flashback. But I hadn’t taken drugs in 20 years.
The ground was moving. On closer observation, dozens, hundreds, thousands of shells were walking towards the ocean on the other side of our camper. I sat, rapt, half-hanging out of the tent, staring at this mass march of hermit crabs …

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One Man’s Trash – by Piri Eddy
Fiction Piri Eddy Fiction Piri Eddy

One Man’s Trash – by Piri Eddy

… He had taught her everything he knew. How to secure the hook and sinker, what knots to use. How to feel the tension in the line – to work with your catch, not against it. He showed her how to cut the skin, to separate the good from the bad. On the table, he laid out his catch from the lake: a bed spring, two cigarette butts, a crumpled-up bottle. ‘Where’d they come from?’ she asked. ‘From people,’ he said. ‘Back when there was always more.’ …

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The Turkeys – by Saraid Taylor
Nonfiction Saraid Taylor Nonfiction Saraid Taylor

The Turkeys – by Saraid Taylor

she steps through the mallee eucalypts and thinks of her dad: an incarnate old bush song a banjo paterson verse a shearer clean with his hands; never taught to read, travelling all down the south-west country in long jeans into tin sheds making runs of a hundred covered in wool and sweat and flies and animal heat: his life, her childhood a folklore yarn a cliché the great australian ballad, a shearer dad home by friday night only to leave again sunday afternoon …

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Jobs for Women: Annunciate – by A Frances Johnson
Poetry A Frances Johnson Poetry A Frances Johnson

Jobs for Women: Annunciate – by A Frances Johnson

HIGHLY COMMENDED IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2020/21

She won’t go easily; two great wings
pinion mild spring air, remind her
of less feathered rapes. Destiny,
like crime, was never aerodynamic.
She is robust; sulky lips purse a third cigarette.
Here, there are no jobs for young people.
The angel’s eyes burn.
Will you do it? Will you? …

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Geometry of Lament – by Alicia Sometimes
Fiction Alicia Sometimes Fiction Alicia Sometimes

Geometry of Lament – by Alicia Sometimes

Excavations of Viking sites have uncovered razors, combs and ear cleaners constructed from animal bones and antlers. The Vikings buried the dead with their personal belongings and marked the graves with stones. These hallowed sites hid a trove of clues about how they once lived. Which is why it was so perplexing to see around thirty Barbie doll legs protruding from the ground in front of me like a giant toy memorial …

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Spectral Coordinates – by Brigid Magner
Nonfiction Brigid Magner Nonfiction Brigid Magner

Spectral Coordinates – by Brigid Magner

… I found the survey map for my street, which was labelled in an expert copperplate hand. Till then, I hadn’t registered that I live in the ‘Parish of Jika Jika’ in the ‘County of Bourke’. Jika Jika, also known as Billibellary, was a revered elder of the Woiwurrung. His name was given to a parish which dispossessed his people, as well as to a notorious wing of the Pentridge prison that no longer exists. Seeing my family home mapped out on this survey made me feel uneasy and complicit …

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Self-portrait as Frida Kahlo – by Katherine Brabon
Poetry Katherine Brabon Poetry Katherine Brabon

Self-portrait as Frida Kahlo – by Katherine Brabon

RUNNER-UP IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2020/2021

I tell her about Frida Kahlo her right leg thinner than the other my left leg / thinner than the other. A pebble of obsession in me a need for similarity of / any limb. The slow ebb circulation in her leg my knee is concrete I say / this my friend shifts one leg over the other. Frida saying I must have full / skirts and long, now that my sick leg is so ugly. I say my sick leg is so / ugly my sick leg is so ugly, says my friend …

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Exoskeletons – by John Kinsella
Poetry John Kinsella Poetry John Kinsella

Exoskeletons – by John Kinsella

RUNNER-UP IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2020/2021

Words are less inherently
appealing less appealing
inherently only as skin
needing to graft extra
senses though likely that’s
too harsh an abrasive rub
of wild oats and seed spikes…

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Interiors – by Zac Picker
Fiction Zac Picker Fiction Zac Picker

Interiors – by Zac Picker

Back in the old days, Shad used to look up at night and think about how it all seemed so big. It was a kind of secret psalm, he thought. Layers of learning stacked on top of each other like an upside-down pyramid projected from his head, stretched into the foggy distance of the firmament. Lying on the cool evening grass, he could feel it in the fuzzy spots behind his eyes …

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Falling Asleep Under the Love Umbrella – by Clare Millar
Nonfiction Clare Millar Nonfiction Clare Millar

Falling Asleep Under the Love Umbrella – by Clare Millar

The first book I give H is a picture book … H isn’t drawn to books these days, having let reading fall to the side during uni, but I give the book to him on the way to my place. It’s autumn, but feels like winter already, and we shiver on the bus. There’s just enough light to read against the darkness outside …

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Phantom Menace Hours – by Victoria Manifold
Fiction Victoria Manifold Fiction Victoria Manifold

Phantom Menace Hours – by Victoria Manifold

It’s real Phantom Menace hours down at the motel. I’m waiting for Adam. We’re having an affair but haven’t consummated it yet. I’m vaguely worried that if we have sex it’ll be terrible, ‘not because of me,’ I’d told him, ‘I’m really good at it.’ And it’s true. I have a great track record with lots of positive feedback …

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Sea Legs – by Sophie Overett
Fiction Sophie Overett Fiction Sophie Overett

Sea Legs – by Sophie Overett

‘Okay,’ he says, knocking a sand-covered knee against hers. ‘You have to tell me why.’

And she gives him that look. The one she knows will burrow under his skin, feasting on any wriggling uncertainty, an emerita in the beach of him.

‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

He laughs like he gets it, which he doesn’t, because if he did, he wouldn’t have asked in the first place …

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Six new articles inspired by nature – an introduction

We are excited to publish the first six articles from our Australian Nature Writing Project. These have been selected by our Online Editor, Ben Walter, who also initiated the project. This is what Ben had to say about the first set of works.

Recently I sat on an upper floor in the Hobart library, intending to write this introduction, but a huge storm was mounding up through the windows; lightning flashed and thunder tore the sky as the clouds whirled grey. I was totally distracted – despite my best intentions, the natural world interfered and I got nothing done. When we began this first of three cycles publishing Australian nature writing, we hoped to find writers who had let nature disrupt their work much more productively …

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A Waving Forest – by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn

A Waving Forest – by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn

… Beneath the water, life is more graceful. Sprawling groves of kelp shift and furl in the current, while tiny silver snook fish dart between the seaweed; a wrasse glides between the plunging curtains. I follow it, hearing my sucking breath amplified by my snorkel. The mask fogs up. I continue paddling, floating and kicking over the kelp beds. I can’t see anything except a cloud of my own shallow breathing. Suddenly, my heart is racing—my chest feels like it will burst. The physical sensation of being underwater grips my ribcage like a vice. As spots appear in the corner of my mask, every shadow becomes a dark trench ready to swallow me …

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Changing Spots – by Sharon Kent
Nonfiction Sharon Kent Nonfiction Sharon Kent

Changing Spots – by Sharon Kent

I find the scats on the beach, lying by a faint depression in the sand. With careful gloved hands I pick them up. They are strange – grey-brown with a gritty texture, smelling nothing like the dog faeces they are supposed to resemble. I label a plastic bag with neat letters –16 January 2017. The Neck, Bruny Island, Tasmania – then drop the scats into the bag and seal it up. Later, a researcher will examine the specimen and extract samples for DNA analysis – a small piece in a giant puzzle. Through the plastic, I can see feathers. They are black and white. I wonder if any of them belong to the little penguins from the colony behind the dunes …

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A Questionable Survey of Suburban Eucalypts – by Uthpala Gunethilake
Nonfiction Uthpala Gunethilake Nonfiction Uthpala Gunethilake

A Questionable Survey of Suburban Eucalypts – by Uthpala Gunethilake

… There are several magnificent specimens down the slope; tall, always tall, with reddish-orange trunks and sprays of white blossoms in summer. Two books, one app and many websites later, I’m confused – is this a grey gum that has shed its bark or a Sydney red gum? Another has the telltale squiggle of moth larvae etched on its creamy-smooth bark, so it must be a scribbly gum. But it looks so much like another smooth-barked species, which fits the description of blackbutt. Another has bark furrowed like a Christmas log cake – is that a stringybark? The thing is, I can’t be sure. I know they’re all eucalypts, but I can’t call them by their names …

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