In 2008, Melbourne joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network when it was designated the first and only City of Literature in Australia, and the second in the world. Melbourne’s designation as a UNESCO City of Literature is acknowledgment of the breadth, depth and vibrancy of the city’s literary culture. Melbourne supports a diverse range of writers,…

They’d shared friends from the beginning. They met three times without meaning to. First at the Gasometer, in the draughty space by the bandroom, for Yusra’s birthday. Audrey was a sleepy drunk sloping out of her chair and under Nick’s arm. The second time they escaped a party and ran out into the night. They…

Over November I house-sat and did things like flick through the books on their bookshelves and go through their home movies, watching and re-watching their children being born. I found the family’s Christmas stash, deep in the master bedroom’s closet, and from that stash took out the foot bath and slid it back into its…

Get Me Out of Here Too much too young. Get me out of here… Chrissy Amphlett wails into the microphone while I vacuum – it’s up loud so I can her over the big bloody Dyson I thought would be the answer to domestic problems and anxieties about dirt. “Too much too young…” I see…

In the third episode of Housekeeping – the Wheeler Centre’s five-part mini-series of short podcast features on Australian democracy – Jarni Blakkarly investigates why some Australian citizens abstain from voting … and finds some dramatically different reasons.

Container City by Iggi Zhou  Welcome to Container City where another skyscraper is delivered from a womb incubating indifference, onto land corrugated and cold. If the roads are pulmonary veins carrying old blood back to the drawing board, then the trample of feet on this tarmac is like its telltale pulse. Tram tracks below like…

Sitting on my balcony I can see the sun set behind the towers of the North Melbourne commission flats, the S- and T-shaped blocks flanking the larger, darker Y-shape, arms fanning out in all directions. On the horizon, the Flemington towers peek out from behind the motorway, the sky-blue and white ‘cloud’ sculpture perched on…

For some, chronic pain and illness makes sex a meticulously scheduled act involving ups, downs and in-betweens.

Leonard Cohen wrote ‘Who By Fire’ based on the liturgy of the Jewish, Yom Kippur service. It’s a part where the prayer asks who will live and who will die in the coming year. Mi ba esh? mi ba mayim? – Who by fire? Who water? Yom Kippur is the day God either writes you…

‘I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library’ – Jorge Luis Borges It was in the early 1980s, when I was studying physiology, that I first learned about the sensory homunculus. It’s a diagram or map that can be discerned in the tissues of the brain when neurologists, using low electric currents,…

Excerpt from ‘THE HUBBY HUNT’ by Keely   This morning, whilst I’m reading a good-looking article on page 9, the advertisement next door to it catches my eye. I look at the title. Lonely Mother Seeks Loving Husband. I snort. Good luck with that. I am about to dismiss it when I notice the phone…

I had been walking the rivers for weeks. A river is never rushing nonsensically. It is flowing according to a specific seasonal pattern destined to support a unique ecological system. I had an inbuilt hydrological knowledge of country. I could sing in no particular order the flow time, flow path, flow rate, temperature and volume…

Soreti Kadir / Pain and fear Soreti Kadir performs “Pain and fear” at the launch of Audacious, Issue Two at Under the Hammer on January 29, 2016. Sigrun Mikula / Man that bitch was crazy Sigrun Mikula performing her love poem, ‘Man that bitch was crazy,’ at Under the Hammer on Friday, April 29, 2016….

The Rereaders is a fortnightly literary and cultural podcast.

Eleanor was unable to convince herself that she was entirely blameless for her father’s death. When he was old, perhaps she didn’t spend enough time with him, letting weeks and even months drift past between those visits to his farm. Not that she’d been avoiding him. Just that she’d been so busy at work, not…

I don’t want to remember why I am here. Mapping my way as I walk, I just want to remember forward, as the desert light slinks into Brunswick, making the dust glitter, creating mysterious, nocturnal places under the curved metal roofing over the shops. Of course, I have no idea how this desert light reaches…

Daisy walked into a corner and crouched down to tie her shoelaces. She had been working behind the counter since morning. It was lunchtime now. The store was the busiest at lunchtime. Today it was particularly very busy despite the fact that it was a Sunday. Not many people came to Southern Cross on Sundays,…

This is not about cricket. That’s a disclaimer for those who would glance at a landscape’s principal feature and decide the route is not for them. It’s not about cricket in the way that The Lion King is not about lions, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not about vampires, A League of Their Own is…

The Prague City of Literature office offers residential stays for writers and translators in the city. There are six residencies available every year, each lasts two months. The Prague City of Literature office reimburses the resident for a return ticket, provides accommodation for free and a stipend of 600 euros per month. The first resident was…

There is an image that keeps nagging at the back of my mind. An empty highway, a bus that has broken down, and, at the back of the bus, an incredibly old man sitting by himself, clutching a bunch of flowers. This happened long before we went to Venice. Before we moved to London. I…

Chapter One – A Violent and Monstrous End Joss stared at the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur stared back. And then it began to move. It wasn’t fast at first. But steps quickly became strides, and strides soon turned into a gallop. Feet fell like thunder, making pebbles jump and sending salamanders skittering away. Exhaling a shaky breath,…