AustLit

'When I told the counsellor from the university, a tall thin man, who went by the name of Bryan Brown, that I was living with a gambler and that as a consequence my life was uncertain and I was not sure I could finish my studies, he raised his eyebrows. We sat in his small office in the Old Arts Building on the second floor of the university, an office tucked away in what felt to me like a broom cupboard. It was part of the student counselling service. The service was free to all students. I went because Delys Sargeant, who took us for Social Biology, had rung the week before to tell me I had failed my Social Biology exam.'(Introduction)

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Fear gripped me as I stood on the stage and surveyed the crowd, their expectant faces turned upwards in hope. My mouth was dry and I felt a flush of embarrassment as I clutched the microphone in my sweaty palm. Maybe I should have thrown up before I came on? Too late now. Then the first spare notes of acoustic guitar started, picking out the intro to Happy Together by The Turtles.'  (Introduction)

'3.45pm. Walking home from school with my 8-year-old daughter, she asks me this question: When you see a stranger, why don’t you see them again?'  (Introduction)

'“I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” said the voice in Hannalore’s dream. It came, as it had for the last three months, from Erich’s Aunt. The proper Aunt who had come from Holland to find Haanalore. The Aunt who had kept her promise to find her.' (Introduction)

'Before the sun is up, two men – a soldier and a Dominican priest – arrive to fetch him from the hostel. He is a soldier himself, yet they frighten him beyond reason.  In a pouch tucked inside his jerkin is a copy of the letter from the Supremo, counter-signed and stamped with the seal of the Holy Inquisition at Barcelona. He can only trust that it testifies to the nobility of one Englishman, Tristram Winslade, and his adherence to all that is good and true. Right now, any relief it might deliver to his heart, pounding away deep beneath padded kersey layers, is quivering in the pre-dawn chill. They stop at a bakehouse and like kinsmen sit by a brazier, eating sweet bread and goats’ cheese, drinking coffee, while morning strikes the Moorish domes on the cathedral. They ask him about Sir John Arundell. Describe him. Describe his house, its buildings. Describe the garden. ' (Introduction)

' “Information has been received at the City Detective office, of a diabolical murder, committed about midnight on the 11th inst, at Devil’s River, near Mansfield.” ‘NEWS AND NOTES’, The Star (Ballarat, Vic), 22 April 1863, p. 2' (Introduction)

'Donna Ward established Inkerman & Blunt Publishers and indigo, the journal of Western Australian creative writing. She was editor of Sotto Magazine from 2011–2012, and her prose has appeared in Island Magazine, Fish Anthology, Southerly Magazine, Huffington Post and The Big Issue.'  (Introduction)