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Welcome! Here’s a loving snapshot of Melbourne’s literary 2016 by the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office

Published by

    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,…

Novel excerpt

‘Our Magic Hour’ by Jennifer Down

Published by Text Publishing

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…

Short story

Phantasm by Paul Dalla Rosa

Published by Express Media
in Voiceworks

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…

Short story

Get Me Out of Here by Paola Balla

Published by The Lifted Brow
in The Lifted Brow #29

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…

Audio storytelling

No-Shows: Why do people abstain from voting in Australia? by Jarni Blakkarly

Published by The Wheeler Centre
in Housekeeping: a podcast on Australian democracy

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.

Poetry • Short story

Highlights from the West Writers Group by Iggi Zhou, Bo Svoronos, Shu Shu Zheng and Didem Caia

Published by West Writers Group
in Broadsheet

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…

Essay

Suburbs in the Sky: High‑rise commission flats and the Melbourne imagination by Alan Vaarwerk

Published by Kill Your Darlings
in Kill Your Darlings Online

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…

Essay

Good medicine by Jenny O’Keefe

Published by Archer Magazine
in Archer Magazine #6 – June 2016

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

Essay • Spoken word

Songs and Stories of Home by Emily Lubitz

Published by Emerging Writers' Festival
in Emerging Writers' Festival 2016

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…

Essay

These will never be digitised by Adam Browne

Published by Overland
in Overland

‘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,…

Picture book

The Underwater Fancy Dress Parade by Davina Bell (author) and Allison Colpoys (illustrator)

Published by Scribble
in The Underwater Fancy Dress Parade
Uncategorised

Highlights from 100 Story Building by various emerging writers aged 8-14

Published by 100 Story Building

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…

Poetry

Poetry Excerpts from RABBIT by Jennifer Compton and Andreas Å Andersson

Published by RABBIT: a journal for nonfiction poetry
in RABBIT: Issue 18: Philosophy
Zine

Sovereign Apocalypse by Nayuka Gorrie, Paul Gorrie (writers), Hannah Donnelly (editor)

Published by Sovereign Apocalypse
Short story

2209 by Hannah Donnelly

Published by Chart Collective
in 1P/Halley

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…

Spoken word

Melbourne Spoken Word by Soreti Kadir, Sigrun Mikula, Ania Walwicz

Published by Melbourne Spoken Word

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….

Podcast

The Rereaders by Sam Twyford-Moore, Steph Van Schilt and Dion Kagan

Published by The Rereaders

The Rereaders is a fortnightly literary and cultural podcast.

Novel excerpt

The Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman by John Tesarsch

Published by Affirm Press

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…

Novel excerpt

On Brunswick Ground by Catherine de Saint Phalle

Published by Transit Lounge

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…

Short story

‘Is Blood Thicker Than Water?’ by Thisuri Weerasinghe

Published by Peril

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,…

Essay

Ondaatje in Somerset by Geoff Lemon

Published by Meanjin
in Meanjin Summer 2015

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…

Novel excerpt

The Toymaker by Liam Pieper

Published by Penguin

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…

Graphic storytelling

Selections from ‘If We All Spat At Once They’d Drown: Drawings About Class’ by Sam Wallman (editor)

Published by Pen Erases Paper
Novel excerpt

Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson

Published by Scribe

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…

Zine

O Mariana by Alice & Beck

Published by Sticky

 

Novel excerpt

The Riders of Thunder Realm (Paladero #1) by Steven Lochran

Published by Hardie Grant

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,…

A project of the Melbourne City of Literature Site designed by Studio Sometimes