The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic by New York Times Magazine

$35.00 AUD

Category: Anthologies

A stunning collection of new short stories originally commissioned by The New York Times Magazine as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, from twenty-nine authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Colm Toibin, Kamilia Shamsie, David Mitchell and more, in a project inspired by Boccaccio's The De cameron. When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it. In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote "The Decameron": one hundred nested tales told by a group of young men and women passing the time at a villa outside Florence while waiting out the gruesome Black Death, a plague that killed more than 25 million people. Some of the stories are silly, some are bawdy, some are like fables. In March of 2020, the editors of The New York Times Magazine created The Decameron Project, an anthology with a simple, time-spanning goal: to gather a collection of stories written as our current pandemic first swept the globe. How might new fiction from some of the finest writers working today help us memorialize and understand the unimaginable? And what could be learned about how this crisis will affect the art of fiction? These twenty-nine new stories, from authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, and David Mitchell vary widely in texture and tone. Their work will be remembered as a historical tribute to a time and place unlike any other in our lifetimes, and offer perspective and solace to the reader now and in a future where coronavirus is, hopefully, just a memory.   ...Show more

Quarterly Essay 78: The Coal Curse: Resources, Climate and Australia's Future by Judith Brett

$22.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter, accounting for over a third of coal exports worldwide. In 2018, coal overtook iron ore as our most valuable export. Scott Morrison’s government has embraced coal, doubling down on supporting the industry, calling climate-based boycotts of coal companies “i ndulgent and selfish” and vowing to stop protestors. But what does our increased reliance on coal mean for the nation? For the economy and the environment? And where will it leave us when the world stops buying it? In this nuanced and insightful essay, Judith Brett looks at the consequences of Australia’s coal addiction, from stalled climate-change policy to tensions between farmers and miners. She assesses where to next for a fractious Coalition and the Quiet Australians. ...Show more

Incidental Inventions (HB) by Elena Ferrante; Ann Goldstein (Translator); Andrea Ucini (Illustrator)

$29.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

"This is my last column, after a year that has scared and inspired me." With these words, Elena Ferrante, the bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, bid farewell to her year-long collaboration with the Guardian. For a full year she penned short pieces, the subjects of which were suggested by edit ors at the Guardian, turning the writing process into a kind of prolonged interlocution; the subjects ranged from first love to climate change, from enmity among women to the adaptation of her novels to film and TV. As she said in her final column: "I have written as an author of novels, taking on matters that are important to me and that--if I have the will and the time--I'd like to develop within real narrative mechanisms." Here, then, are the seeds of possible future novels, the ruminations of an internationally beloved author, and the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called "one of the great novelists of our time" (the New York Times). Gathered here in a beautiful gift edition and accompanied by a new, original introduction by the author and Andrea Ucini's intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans. ...Show more

Maar Bidi: Next Generation Black Writing by Elfie Shiosaki (Editor); Linda Martin (Editor)

$24.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

In this beautifully crafted, evocative and poignant anthology of prose and fiction, a diverse group of young black writers are encouraged to find strength in their voices and what is important to them. maar bidi is a journey into what it is to be young, a person of colour and a minority in divergent and conflicting worlds. All talk to what is meaningful to them, whilst connecting the old and the new, the ancient and the contemporary in a variety of ways. These young essayists, critics, novelists, poets, authors shake down words and works to find styles, forms and meanings that have influenced them and all their writings. These pieces are snapshots of peoples, places and perception. 'Each writer is telling an individual story but if you map them they are telling a story of young black Australia – and that makes it profound – because unlike other writers, Indigenous writers speak of country and kin. What does it mean for us when young Indigenous people find their voice in writing?' — Elfie Shiosaki, Editor ...Show more

Grandmothers: Essays by 21st-Century Grandmothers by Helen Elliott

$34.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

An anthology of essays by twenty-four Australian women, edited by Helen Elliott, about the many aspects of being a grandmother in the 21st century. It seems so different from the experience we had of our grandmothers. Although perhaps the human essential, love, hasn't shifted much? In thoughtful, provok ing, uncompromising writing, a broad range of women reflect on vastly diverse experiences. This period of a woman's life, a continuation and culmination, is as defining as any other and the words 'grand' and 'mother' rearrange and realign themselves into bright focus. The contributors- Stephanie Alexander, Maggie Beer, Judith Brett, Jane Caro, Elizabeth Cheung, Cresside Collette, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Helen Garner, Anastasia Gonis, Glenda Guest, Katherine Hattam, Celestine Hitiura Vaite, Yvette Holt, Cheryl Kernot, Ramona Koval, Alison Lester, Joan London, Jenny Macklin, Auntie Daphnie Milward, Mona Mobarek, Carol Raye and Gillian Triggs. ...Show more

Heartsick for Country by Blaze Kwaymullina, Tjalaminu Mia, and Sally Morgan

$27.95 AUD

Category: Anthologies

The stories in this anthology speak of the love between Aboriginal peoples and their countries. They are personal accounts that share knowledge, insight and emotion, each speaking of a deep connection to country and of feeling heartsick because of the harm that is being inflicted on country even today, through the logging of old growth forests, converting millions of acres of land to salt fields, destruction of ancient rock art and significant Aboriginal sacred sites, and a record of species extinction that is the worst in the world. ...Show more

Meanjin Vol 79 No 3 by Jonathan Green

$24.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

Living with the Anthropocene: Love, Loss and Hope in the Face of Environmental Crisis by Cameron Muir (Editor); Jennifer Newell (Editor); Kirsten Wehner (Editor)

$34.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

Australia — and the world — is changing. On the Great Barrier Reef corals bleach white, across the inland farmers struggle with declining rainfall, birds and insects disappear from our gardens and plastic waste chokes our shores. The 2019–20 summer saw bushfires ravage the country like never before and young and old alike are rightly anxious. Human activity is transforming the places we live in and love.In this extraordinarily powerful and moving book, some of Australia's best-known writers and thinkers — as well as ecologists, walkers, farmers, historians, ornithologists, artists and community activists — come together to reflect on what it is like to be alive during an ecological crisis. They build a picture of a collective endeavour towards a culture of care, respect, and attention as the physical world changes around us. How do we hold onto hope?Personal and urgent, this is a literary anthology for our age, the age of humans.Contributors include:Michael Adams — Nadia Bailey — Saskia Beudel — Tony Birch — James Bradley — Jo Chandler — Adrienne Corradini — Sophie Cunningham — John Dargavel — Penny Dunstan — Delia Falconer — Laura Fisher — Suzy Freeman-Greene — Andrea Gaynor — Joëlle Gergis — Billy Griffiths — Ashley Hay — Justine Hyde — Lucas Ihlein — Jennifer Lavers — Ian Lunt — George Main — Cameron Allan Mckean — Gretchen Miller — Ruth A. Morgan — Stephen Muecke — Cameron Muir — Jenny Newell — Emily O'gorman — Kate Phillips — Alison Pouliot — Jane Rawson — Annalise Rees — Lauren Rickards — David Ritter — Libby Robin — John Charles Ryan — Katrina Schlunke — Ray Thompson  —  Angela Tiatia  —  Ellen Van Neerven  —  Adriana Vergés  —  Kirsten Wehner  —  Gib Wettenhall  —  Josh Wodak —  Kate Wright 'Living with the Anthropocene is an illuminating deep-dive in this 'storm of our own making'. With such a diverse and expansive collection of voices, what makes this book stand out is its unity. Thinking about climate change can be lonely and devastating but here you can be assured of being held, not only in thrall, but in great company.' — Anna Krien'An important book that speaks to our time.' — Tim Flannery'With this marvellous book the term Anthropocene loses its academic tinge to become a pervasive and pressing reality. A pantheon of Australia's finest environmental writers reveals the haunting personal costs of living in a world that humans have already turned upside down.' — Iain McCalman'Scientists originated the term and concept of the Anthropocene. But this work takes a much deeper dive into what the Anthropocene really means for us humans now and into the future, and – importantly – what the Anthropocene means for the rest of life with which we share this planet.' — Will Steffen   ...Show more

Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel

$39.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Books, she wrote to the editor, Karl Miller, ‘I have no critical training whatsoever, so I am forced to be more brisk and breezy than scholarly.’ This collection of twenty reviews, essays and pieces of memoir from the next three dec ades, tells the story of what happened next. Her subjects range far and wide: Robespierre and Danton, the Hite report, Saudi Arabia where she lived for four years in the 1980s, the Bulger case, John Osborne, the Virgin Mary as well as the pop icon Madonna, a brilliant examination of Helen Duncan, Britain’s last witch. There are essays about Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, Christopher Marlowe and Margaret Pole, which display the astonishing insight into the Tudor mind we are familiar with from the bestselling Wolf Hall Trilogy. Her famous lecture, ‘Royal Bodies’, which caused a media frenzy, explores the place of royal women in society and our imagination. Here too are some of her LRB diaries, including her first meeting with her stepfather and a confrontation with a circus strongman. Constantly illuminating, always penetrating and often very funny, interleaved with letters and other ephemera gathered from the archive, Mantel Pieces is an irresistible selection from one of our greatest living writers. ...Show more

A Country Too Far by Rosie; Keneally Scott

$24.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

"I don't think I've seen a more impressive collection of Australian writers in a single book.'aStephen Romei,aThe Australian One of the central moral issues of our time is the question of asylum seekers, arguably the most controversial subject in Australia today. In this landmark anthology, twenty-seven of Australia's finest writers have focused their intelligence and creativity on the theme of the dispossessed, bringing a whole new perspective of depth and truthfulness to what has become a fraught, distorted war of words. This anthology confirms that the experience of seeking asylum u the journeys of escape from death, starvation, poverty or terror to an imagined paradise u is part of the Australian mindset and deeply embedded in our culture and personal histories.a A Country Too Farais a tour de force of stunning fiction, memoir, poetry and essays. Edited by award-winning writers Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally, and featuring contributors including Anna Funder, Christos Tsiolkas, Elliot Perlman, Gail Jones, Raimond Gaita, Les Murray, Rodney Hall and Geraldine Brooks, this rich anthology is by turns thoughtful, fierce, evocative, lyrical and moving, and always ...Show more

Far and Away by Adrian Gill

$32.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

Remembered By Heart: An Anthology Of Indigenous Writing by Sally Morgan

$17.99 AUD

Category: Anthologies

A collection of powerful, true stories of Aboriginal life   This anthology brings together 15 memoirs of growing up Aboriginal in Australia and includes works from Kim Scott, Australia's first indigenous Miles Franklin winner; bestselling author Sally Morgan; and the critically acclaimed artist, autho r, and activist Bronwyn Bancroft. These true stories of adolescence are as diverse as they are moving, and offer readers insight into the pain, humor, grief, hope, and pride that makes up Indigenous experiences. ...Show more