AustLit

'This is an insult! I’m a professional.’ Halfway through day one of week 15 of the third season of Australia’s biggest sketch-comedy show, and the A-list comedienne had had enough. She was tired of crappy roles and crappy scripts. Now here she was at the door of the writers room, giving us hell. She was a goodish writer herself, but none of her stuff—loose, aleatoric in the Melbourne cabaret style— was being used any more. She had a right to be angry and the only thing that took the edge off her protest was that she was dressed as a giant rotisserie chicken. Even as she was denouncing us, I was admiring the skill of our costume department, who had rendered oily skin and white meat with a bit of chintz and kapok.' (Introduction)

'I’ve been thinking about bisexuality. Identity, visibility, queerness, truth. I’ve been thinking about these things as I read and talk, as I work and watch and sleep. It’s an attempt to come home to myself, to call back the parts I have been lonely without. On a visit to Melbourne for a festival, I experience anew the small thrill of thankfulness and determination that for me comes with being seen as queer; with being seen. I’m surprised to find my favourite thing about the fortnight I spend there is that in Melbourne I am new to everyone I meet. I am unfettered by assumptions they might make if they had more—but not complete— information. Here I am subject to different assumptions, ones that release me to the fullness of my identity.' (Introduction)

'It was the wind that put this place on the map. If a ship caught the Roaring Forties east from the Cape of Good Hope, Tasmania would be her first sight of land, and its south-east coastline, elaborately indented and islanded, her first harbour. Abel Tasman was blown here in 1642, unable to anchor. James Cook and Tobias Furneaux, 130 years later, were separated in fog near Antarctica; Furneaux washed up in a sheltered bay he named Adventure, after his ship.' (Introduction)

'I was seven and had just finished swimming practice at Sutherland Shire Leisure Centre. There I stood in the shower rooms—brown, nervous at the sight of so much white flesh, and very embarrassed.' (Introduction)

'In a Readings blog review of Inga Simpson’s Where the Trees Were, Melbourne bookseller Amy Vuleta jokes, ‘If you ever find yourself wondering, ‘Where are all the lesbians in books?’, you’ll find some of them here, just living their lives.’ It’s a good joke, because it’s difficult to find queer women in all literature—especially here in Australia. Even in this era of ‘woke publishing’ (or what might more reasonably be called ‘responsibly inclusive publishing’), queer women can still feel underserved by the offerings in most local bookstores.' (Introduction)

'Power is inflicted and fortified at every social rim, forcing an exhausting battle on those on the back foot. Some will get out. Others will get by. The fight will feel futile at times, with small triumphs along the way. Most will continue to rise each day, thrust among the systemic tide, putting one foot in front of the other.' (Introduction)