AustLit

'Chop Chef is a dark, satirical comedy where six contestants from around Australia enter the cooking battle field of a fictional reality television series Chop Chef. Faced with unusual and extreme cooking challenges, Kitty, Tom, Andy, Victoria, Kale and Renée must compete to remain alive in the game and avoid facing the chop – literally.

'The shiny kitchen arena is watched over by three omnipresent judges who decide the fate of each contestant but not all is as it seems and some contestants start to question the forces that bind them to their contracts. Perhaps the tables will turn…

'This new Australian opera mashes together flavours of Masterchef and Hunger Games on the operatic stage where reality television can be pushed to its absurd conclusions. In thrilling arias and melodramatic ensembles, each contestant is pushed to their limit and will stop at nothing to be the last chef standing. In the game of Chop Chef, there is only one rule – eat or be eaten. Are you ready to join our live audience?'

Source: Parramatta Riverside.

'A journalist searches for the king of slam poetry, L. Chapman, whose followers swallow his grandiose ideas after they swallow his trademark drug, Blank. L. Chapman takes their money and causes social and syntactic chaos — but will he meet with poetic justice?'

Source: ABC Radio National.

'I am on a crowded bus heading into the wilds of China. It’s ten degrees Celsius. The driver is swerving all over the place, seemingly for his own entertainment. I feel more than a little travel-sick. As I stare out the window to steady my stomach, I catch a glimpse of a disturbing scene unfolding by the roadside – a cobra is in the process of swallowing a large toad. The toad’s hind legs hang limply from the snake’s jaws. It is finally too much for me. Overcome with nausea, I throw up all over the shrivelled woman on my right, who has been plucking a live chicken on her lap. She and the bird look at me with disgust.' (Introduction)

'Mark Twain once declared that the sole function of a writer is to tell the truth. And yet many of the world’s noblest storytellers—the consciences of our nations—have sadly gone unrecognised in their own lifetimes. With this in mind, we have gathered here today to announce the winner of the inaugural Paradox Prize—an award recognising the best unrecognised book of the previous year. It is a pleasure to be here at the State Library of New South Wales on this fine December evening. Many thanks to Meanjin, which has generously sponsored this ceremony.' (Introduction) 

'On morning TV, a politician is promising to build a wall. The wall will divide Australia across the middle.' 

'A biting collection of stories from a bold new voice. A young girl sees ghosts from her third eye, located where her belly button should be. A corporate lawyer feels increasingly disconnected from his job in a soulless 1200-storey skyscraper. And a one-dimensional yellow man steps out from a cinema screen in the hope of leading a three-dimensional life, but everyone around him is fixated only on the color of his skin. Welcome to Portable Curiosities. In these dark and often fantastical stories, Julie Koh combines absurd humour with searing critiques on modern society, proving herself to be one of Australia's most original and daring young writers.' (Publication summary)

'A capsule collection of surreal short stories from one of Australia's rising stars.

'A woman arrives on the seventh level of Heaven, only to realise it is a trading floor where the dead swap their karma before rebirth. In a Sydney laboratory, a vagrant participates in cosmeceutical trials in return for a Rolex watch. On an island made out of sugar, a student questions the rule of the benevolent Sugar Daddy. At an open mic night in New York, a zen poet takes the stage and begins to tell the greatest, most devastating joke in the world. In this blackly funny parallel universe, Koh explores the absurdity of a world in which the market has become God.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.