AustLit

'Throughout this pandemic, I’ve been reading fiction to simulate going home to Florida. I read Ivy Pochoda’s sprawling Los Angeles novel Wonder Valley (2017) to replicate my layovers after flying into LAX, and Swamplandia! (2011) by Karen Russell to remember the smell of swampland and the tacky sadness of gift shop strip malls. I returned to Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot (2002) to relive the experience of buying a shrink-wrapped copy at the Scholastic Book Fair in the refrigerated library of my Central Florida elementary school. For 18 months I have used fiction for my own simulative purposes, as a game I can play to get home.'  (Introduction)