Writers

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Body Shell Girl is a special book – layered, creative, complicated. On one level we can approach it as a confessional, a delivery of one woman’s story where the subject matter is clear – we know Rose has created a verse novel inspired in her own words by ‘the radioactive journals’ she kept in the first two years of a decade long stint in the sex industry – in this way the book joins a conversation, a context with other books that explore this industry from different points of view.

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Louise Wakeling is a Sydney poet who lives in the Blue Mountains. Off Limits (Puncher & Wattmann, 2021) is her fourth collection of poetry. Her work has also been published online in Burrow and in anthologies such as The Best Australian Poems (2010), Antipodes (Phoenix Publications, 2011), Contemporary Poetry (Puncher & Wattmann, 2016), Caring for Country (Phoenix Publications, 2017), Live Encounters (2018), Arrival (Lost in Books (2018), Wild Voices: An anthology on wildlife issues, ed. David Bassett (2019) and Messages from the Embers: From Devastation to Hope: Australian Bushfire Anthology (Black Quill Press, 2020). Her first novel, Saturn Return, was published by Hale & Iremonger in 1990. Wakeling currently alternates between writing poetry, casual English teaching and working on a second novel about coercive control and intergenerational trauma in the lives of three generations of women in Sydney and on the NSW Central Coast.

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Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet residing in Texas. His books include Boulevard (Beir Bua Press, 2021); (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020); BLUE (above/ground press, 2020); Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017); Distance (Ginninderra Press, 2015); Suburban Exile (Picaro Press, 2011); and Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010). His poetry, published in fourteen countries, appears in journals and anthologies including Anthropocene, Cordite Poetry Review, The Elevation Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, New World Writing, Mascara Literary Review, Ponder Review, Westerly and Wisconsin Review. He is the poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.

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The verse novel is a form now in constant transition and evolution, and here we see a huge range of writers interviewed, and their individual work explored. The Verse Novel Australia & New Zealand (2021) throws a wide and inclusive net, almost literally across the sea, from Australia to New Zealand, including parts of the Pacific.

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Once considered amongst the giants of Australian literature, Katharine Susannah Prichard moved in a broad and fascinating social circle, friends with many of the literary and political greats in this country, Alfred Deakin, John Curtin, H.V. (Doc) Evatt, Miles Franklin, Vance and Nettie Palmer amongst them. Prichard, a foundation member of the Communist Party of Australia in 1921, was a writer of fiction, poetry and memoir, and lesser known as a playwright.

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Susie Walsh is a poet, writer, and filmmaker based in Braidwood, NSW. She has written scripts for short films screened at film festivals, and for AV installations exhibited in galleries. She is currently working on Palimpsest — a collection of poems, hybrid texts, and reflective essayistic interchapters in response to the lived and multi-layered experiences of drought, the 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires, several floods, and existential distress about COVID19. Her poem “Discordant” was in the Solastalgia exhibition (Tuggeranong Arts Centre, 2020); “How I Hold You” is in the What We Carry anthology (Recent Works Press, 2021); and “Rewind Erase Record” will be in the Admissions anthology (Upswell, Oct 2022).

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Simplicity and dedication are two apt words to sum up The Pink Book, a collection of images and memoirs from Henry Von Doussa. The book is a series of personal essays and collages bound in an exquisite coffee-table book; it bursts with colour and nuance yet simplicity and dedication to the characters and stories that lie within.

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