In Quarantine – by Megan Clement
Nonfiction Megan Clement Nonfiction Megan Clement

In Quarantine – by Megan Clement

WINNER , ISLAND NONFICTION PRIZE 2021

… The neon green BP sign across the road means the opposite of what it used to. It means I am stuck in this liminal space, with a guard at my door 24/7, squirrelled away to protect the health of Australians everywhere. This would be fine except for the fact that I’m here for 14 days and my father is dying and I don’t know if he has 14 days left …

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This Moon – by Megan Coupland
Nonfiction Megan Coupland Nonfiction Megan Coupland

This Moon – by Megan Coupland

It’s the tail end of 1873, November, and a clergyman is rugged up against a sluggish dusk. Along a Newfoundland coastline, Reverend Moses Harvey makes his way towards a fishing boat on the shore; he’s approaching the knot of fishermen who summoned him. The men, just in from the sea, are clustered around the carcass they’ve surfaced, a creature dredged inadvertently from the depths of Logy Bay, tangled in their herring nets. Harvey’s not there on church business. Instead, he’s made a name for himself locally as a collector of curiosities and the fishermen have offered him their haul: a giant squid, dead on arrival …

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23 vignettes on the rental crisis – by Anna Jacobson
Poetry Anna Jacobson Poetry Anna Jacobson

23 vignettes on the rental crisis – by Anna Jacobson

1. When I move in, the manager stands in my room. He says it’s important for me to be quiet. His gaze fixes on the wall, trying to appease whoever is on the other side.

2. Someone told me that people go missing here – that my street is the Bermuda Triangle of Brisbane. Today was the first day my lips started tasting like metal. I think it’s stress.

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Stanzas – by Jo Gardiner
Poetry Jo Gardiner Poetry Jo Gardiner

Stanzas – by Jo Gardiner

If you talk about tomorrow, they say,

the rats in the ceiling will laugh, so speak

only of this one day when morning drops

its bright curtain across the window

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Parturition Chairs I-V – by Isabella G Mead
Poetry Isabella G Mead Poetry Isabella G Mead

Parturition Chairs I-V – by Isabella G Mead

How can a chair look like a scream? 

And why do its arms recoil? 

A cry trapped in polished walnut 

curves and re-curves. No frills in a shout.

Sit here only if you want to feel six-legged.

Where is the voice that birthed its legs?

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Friendly fire – by Tricia Dearborn
Poetry Tricia Dearborn Poetry Tricia Dearborn

Friendly fire – by Tricia Dearborn

the reassuring foof as it ignites      

flickering blue under a small saucepan

coaxing the milk to warmth for cocoa

puffing up the dumplings, alchemising

sugar and butter and golden syrup

to sumptuous stickiness

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Ghost streets – by Alexandra Sangster
Nonfiction Alexandra Sangster Nonfiction Alexandra Sangster

Ghost streets – by Alexandra Sangster

I have lived here long enough to know where the people who are not living anymore live.

Well not them exactly, but their ghosts.

All of the streets speak.

There is a build-up

of bones

(not the literal kind, not like in Paris with the catacombs or in Scotland with the pits of plague dead under your feet)

but bones none the less.

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Magic – by Maria Takolander and David McCooey
Fiction Maria Takolander & David McCooey Fiction Maria Takolander & David McCooey

Magic – by Maria Takolander and David McCooey

I can do magic. That’s what she told me when we met. We had found ourselves walking side-by-side among a small group of strangers on a tour of the local gardens. She told me her name and then came out with the confession. It hung between us, like a rabbit, pale and trembling, pulled out of an invisible hat. I had no idea what she was talking about. I wondered: why had she hand-picked me? I was becoming paranoid: what was I unknowingly giving away about myself? After that, even the grass seemed vaguely treacherous, but then I’ve never been an outdoors person.

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A thousand gifts – by Maki Morita
Nonfiction Maki Morita Nonfiction Maki Morita

A thousand gifts – by Maki Morita

this story about food starts in a gym, but I’m talking free-to-air TV not protein bars — running on a treadmill to the white noise of Border Security could be the crème de la crème of suburban pastimes — did you know quarantine law makes good primetime drama? — we pant we glance we witness a family unravel souvenirs with which to adorn their kitchen — this is a tune to hum along to and I take another sip of water

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The Budgie - by Jing Cramb
Fiction Jing Cramb Fiction Jing Cramb

The Budgie - by Jing Cramb

My son couldn’t even say the word ‘dog’ back then; he called it a ‘dug’. It was cute but I was not moved by his cuteness nor any puppy’s cuteness – I was in the middle of a divorce. Not to mention that I was bitten on the leg by a stray village dog when I was young. Over the years, the reasons for not getting a dog evolved into three questions: Who is going to walk the dog every day? Who will be responsible for collecting the poo? How much will it cost to own a dog? My son and I both knew it was the answer to the last question that left us dogless, but we never admitted it, as if keeping the same secret from each other and assuming the other person did not know.

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Day 210 – by Brigid Coleridge
Poetry Brigid Coleridge Poetry Brigid Coleridge

Day 210 – by Brigid Coleridge

WINNER OF THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023

‘Russia–Ukraine War Latest: What We Know On Day 210 Of The Invasion’
The Guardian, 21 September 2022

We meet because someone told us to.
You will enjoy each other he says, but
it is the wrong word. When I see you,
you are deep in Cubism – guitars
in shards, your back a pointed stroke.

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Shedload – by Chris Andrews
Poetry Chris Andrews Poetry Chris Andrews

Shedload – by Chris Andrews

RUNNER-UP, GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023

I shove the shed door open. That smell:
turpentine, creosote, ivy, mouse.
Empty silhouettes on the pegboard.
Who kept all these broken promises
of repair? OK, all right, but I
can’t have been the soldering angel
who restored the heirloom crystal set.

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Improbable Acts of Proximity – by Shey Marque
Poetry Shey Marque Poetry Shey Marque

Improbable Acts of Proximity – by Shey Marque

RUNNER-UP, GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023

i

To imagine the dead are running
short of space – I’ll call it unlikely, so much of it
going spare, idle, we’re most hectic at the edges.
I hollo long into the wintering acres, white
particles of grief touching a thing that hits another thing
hurtling towards an edge. You bring spectre only to strangers
because my longing is too great, my pull too strong.
At some point the moon will spiral in so near,
our ocean tides will tear it apart, & it will be sublime,
for a minute.

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Gifts from a harsh continent – by Tehnuka
Nonfiction Tehnuka Nonfiction Tehnuka

Gifts from a harsh continent – by Tehnuka

I wake lying on my back, staring up at a bright Antarctic sky. Although I don’t understand how I got here, I’m not surprised at having been unconscious on the ice. A childhood spent reading tales of Shackleton and Scott has left me believing Antarctica is where scientists and explorers go to die, or at least lose their toes. Despite, or perhaps because of, this conviction, I leapt at the opportunity for fieldwork on a volcano on the edge of Antarctica, in what then seemed the wildest place on Earth. And over the next few weeks, whenever things go wrong – snowmobile accident, frostbitten nose, internet malfunction – we will say to one another, making light of it: ‘Well, what did you expect? It’s a harsh continent.’

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The Interpreter – by Mariam Tokhi
Fiction Mariam Tokhi Fiction Mariam Tokhi

The Interpreter – by Mariam Tokhi

Mir was a patient man. When the receptionist glanced up at the waiting room, she barely noticed him, quietly slumped over his phone. He was used to clinic waiting rooms with their bustle, anxiety and constantly ringing phones; their warning posters of sad, unvaccinated children; the griefs and elations of the people who swung out of the clinic rooms. When Mir was younger, an aspiring doctor himself, he loved watching people, playing a game with his sister Aliza where they guessed the stories of those around them …

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The Hairy Iceberg – by Kylie Moppert
Nonfiction Kylie Moppert Nonfiction Kylie Moppert

The Hairy Iceberg – by Kylie Moppert

Until a year ago, I lived in an apartment above a shop front in a leafy inner suburb. After decades of living in the outer suburbs, I’d flipped a coin and leased an abandoned restaurant with rooms upstairs. There were restaurants on either side, elm trees in the street’s central garden strip, and Victorian terraces boasting ironwork fences. I renovated downstairs into an artisan bakery and immersed myself in unrelenting hours of slow-ferment, wild-yeast sourdough …

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This Time Next Week – by Richard Rebel
Fiction Richard Rebel Fiction Richard Rebel

This Time Next Week – by Richard Rebel

Butch and Sundance are pinned down and bleeding in the shadows, about to go out in a sepia-toned blaze of glory. Redford – he’s got the stoic and determined thing down pat, with the boyish charm still there just below the surface. Newman’s blue eyes shine, even when the rest of his face isn’t smiling.

Dad shifts in his chair. There is a cold cup of tea beside him. He says something about William Goldman and this being one of the first ’70s movies, maybe the first, even though it was ’69. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, story-wise, he says. It’s like they made it up as they went, just a string of scenes … but it’s a fun ride anyway, you know …

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