Reviews/Essays

Stamatia X by Effie Carr ISBN: 9780648170716 Primer Fiction Reviewed by ANGELA COSTI   Stamatia X is a novel fuelled by Greek philosophy, grammar, poetry and history to tell the riveting story of a Greek-Australian, migrant family’s return to their “homeland”. Nostalgia has no place to dwell in this book as the family of five […]

A Brief History of Australian Terror By Bobuq Sayed ISBN Common Room Editions Reviewed by DAVID COADY Bobuq Sayed, a non-binary member of the Afghan diaspora, has put together a brief chapbook of three essays on Islamophobia in Australia. This is a timely and insightful contribution to public debate. The subject, however, cries out for […]

Translations by Joumaana Abdu Vintage ISBN 9781761343872 Reviewed by ROUMINA PARSA   For people in diaspora, the perceived value of our creative expression has traditionally been contingent on the telling of familiar stories. To write into the demands of “authenticity” is to perform with pre-existing notions of our identities as the baseline. The market-prescribed version […]

Because I am Not Myself, You See Ariane Beeston Black Inc ISBN 978-1760644505 Reviewed by A.D. JOHN I tumbled headfirst into Ariane Beeston’s beautiful, poignant, and heart-wrenching memoir, Because I’m Not Myself You See. It affected me like no book has in recent memory. I devoured it over a weekend, engrossed in a story that […]

Thanks for Having Me By Emma Darragh Allen & Unwin Reviewed by HOLDEN WALKER I cannot say I’ve ever had the eureka moment in which I found myself lost in a novel that felt like it had been written for me or had been written about the world I knew personally. Perhaps my interest in […]

Refugia By Elfie Shiosaki Magabala Books ISBN 9781922777133 Reviewed by CHLOE ROBINSON Having previously reviewed Shiosaki’s writing, I picked up Refugia with high expectations, anticipating powerful language and incredible storytelling. But this went well beyond my expectations, achieving its 5-star status, not even halfway through the opening section. I read through the collection twice without […]

Flow Luoyang Chen Red River Press Available at Amplify Books Reviewed by NATALIE DAMJANOVICH-NAPOLEON Flow is both a verb and a noun, an elusive character and a slippery act of movement, in Luoyang Chen’s beguiling debut collection, Flow (Red River). While Chen tells us in his biography that he is interested in the lyric “I” […]

Witness by Louise Milligan ISBN: 9780733644634 Hachette Reviewed by Angela Costi The Trauma of Trial for Survivors of Crime Traditionally, an investigative journalist provides an in-depth analysis of a matter or issue of public concern without having experienced the problem being uncovered. This is not the case in Witness. In Louise Milligan’s book there is […]

The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp Ultimo Press ISBN: 9781761151668 Reviewed by DEBORAH PIKE     Sharlene Allsopp’s debut novel, The Great Undoing, has a great cover that undoes history with a red crayon. Ernest Scott’s A Short History of Australia (1916) is struck out and bold typeface declares an angry and urgent call for […]

The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat Sara M Saleh UQP 2023 Reviewed by KATIE HANSORD How to begin to do justice to reviewing a book of poetry this important, this powerful, and in this moment? If I were to recommend one book to people this year, it would be this. And it has been. […]

Dirt Poor Islanders by Winnie Dunn Hachette ISBN 978-0733649264 Reviewed by ISABEL HOWARD Intercultural struggle is the main question at hand in Winnie Dunn’s Dirt Poor Islanders: how do you define yourself between two different cultures that shape every aspect of your life? Dunn’s novel is written from the perspective of Meadow, a young, mixed-race […]

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck translated by Michael Hofmann ISBN 9781783786121 Granta Reviewed by GAN AINM It’s hard to avoid the idea of allegory when approaching Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Prize-winner, Kairos. Right from the cover, we are told by Neel Mukherjee that ‘Erpenbeck has written an allegory for her nation, a country that has ceased […]

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar Pan Macmillan ISBN: 9781035026074 Reviewed by JAMES GOBBEY   If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among those that survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe […]

Moon Wrasse by Willo Drummond Puncher and Wattmann ISBN 1922571679 Review by MISBAH WOLF When I first picked up Willo Drummond’s debut poetry collection, Moon Wrasse, I was torn between a deep panic of knowing I wanted to become mixed up in the muck, blood, and bloom of the work and wanting to also turn away […]

The Djinn Hunters By Nadia Niaz Hunter Publishers ISBN: 978-0-6453366-9-6 Reviewed by JAVARIA FAROOQUI  The Djinn Hunters is a literary fusion of colours, words, shapes, and heritage, which has been carefully crafted in very interesting and distinct poetic styles. Nadia Niaz plays with the strands of her memories of Lahore to build evocative narratives in […]

Az is a 26-year-old trans wheelchair user with an acquired brain injury. His works of both fiction and non-fiction have appeared in such publications as Voiceworks, Archer, Overland, Mascara Review, ABC News, and the 2023 anthology of the Australian Short Story Festival. He is currently completing a Master of Literature and also graduated with distinction […]

meditations with passing water Jake Goetz Rabbit Poetry Reviewed by HOLLY FRIEDLANDER LIDDICOAT It’s a sophisticated piece of work that imparts its subject matter through its form. This is what I distinctly remember from first reading Jake Goetz’s ‘meditations with passing water’, in one sitting, in 2018, and what still rings true on re-reading five […]

The Open by Lucy Van ISBN: 9780648917601 Cordite Books Reviewed by LUOYANG CHEN Perth is getting colder and I am getting cold. I am on my way to get some jumpers from Target. Writing this review in my head while walking to the bus stop, I am thinking: This is great. I want to test […]

Breath by Carly-Jay Metcalfe ISBN 9780702268359 UQP Reviewed by LIZ SUTHERLAND Breathing was one of the few things in life I took for granted. Until I was 20, out with pneumonia for four months, three fractured ribs from excessive coughing. Then again at 32, post-COVID coughing for three months, two fractured ribs that time. Sickness […]

Leaf By Anne Elvey Liquid Amber Press ISBN 9780645044966 Reviewed by JENNIFER COMPTON   Anne Elvey was recently shortlisted for the David Harold Tribe Poetry Award for one of her elegant, prayerful compositions, that hardly seem to be composed of words as we know them, and yet I suppose they must be. They lift up […]