Bad Weather | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories

Bad Weather single work short story

Author:agent Bryant Apolonio

Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Bad Weather

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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Navotas Port. Trawlers cut through seafoam as they moor. Sun-pruned dockmen swarm the transoms, drawing nets up onto iron decks. The boy could smell the copra and sponge even from here, at the top of the coconut tree he’d climbed. Wind sends the trunk forward and back in loping excursions. Like a crow’s nest, the boy imagines, like the first Spaniards sailing their carracks into the Bay. They’d have followed the southwest trade winds through brothlike fog and known that their wandering had ended. (It doesn’t occur to him that he’s looking the other way. More likely this was what some centuries-old hill-tribesmen saw. What they felt. Bewilderment and wonder and then, well, fear? Despair? The heat of fire, a burial somewhere shallow and unmarked. But he’s only a kid, let him have his fantasies.) Gulls fire slantways across the concrete berm. The boy’s father has materialised, slumped and bird-boned, at the base of the tree. What the hell is Child doing up there? It’s time to work.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Appears in:

y The Lifted Brow no. 43 September 2019 17164128 2019 periodical issue Abstract 'How long we need to do this topic justice. We need to be very deliberate and strategic. We need to be modelling futurity. We need three more salmons and a veggie lasagna. We might need to call it that we can’t live in, say, a nuclear family context. The lever-arch file of paperwork you need to complete. The need to look queer was all the more urgent. We need programs that help. they needed to stop.' (Editorial introduction) 2019
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2019
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pg. 39-42
Appears in:

y Collisions : Fictions of the Future : An Anthology of Australian Writers of Colour Leah Jing McIntosh (editor), Seaforth : Pantera Press , 2020 18828386 2020 anthology short story Abstract
'This collection of short stories showcases some of the best work that Australian literature has to offer in this new decade. Featuring work from both emerging and established writers of colour, the stories in Collisions transcend genre and experiment with style. They are necessary reading for everybody with an interest in the future of fiction and our planet. Although many of these visions are dystopic, the quality of their writers is something the future has to look forward to.

'What does the future hold? Collisions prods at what it means for each author, and while many will come to expect speculative fiction at surface level, the breadth of imagination transcends these boundaries. From an account of a tense dinner party amidst impending signs of climate catastrophe, to a playful fable about a father turning his family backyard into a graveyard; and an irreverent yet thoughtful tale of a gang of activists planning an attack on ASIO drones in a Kyle Sandilands government, these stories are experimental, genre-bending and lucid.

'Collisions presents a diverse collection of work too often ignored or elided in a time where marginalised voices are still unheard. It exists to re-centre the voices of writers of colour and to encourage dynamic narratives, to bring about a more robust literary landscape in Australia’s future.' (Publication summary)
Seaforth : Pantera Press , 2020
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2020
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pg. 18-27