1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)? I admire Cate Kennedy for the quiet way she digs deep into a story and, almost without you noticing, takes you somewhere you weren’t expecting. I’ve just read Ryan O’Neill’s collection, The Weight of a human heart and thoroughly enjoyed … Read More
Spineless Wonders asks Monica Goldberg
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/ micro fiction which is published in small wonder? The realisation that I may never find the right words to describe my visit to Skierniewicza. My grandmother’s parents and siblings were victims of the holocaust. They simply vanished. I wanted to at least try to describe how … Read More
Spineless Wonders asks Mary Manning
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)? There are so many: Colm Tóibín, Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Malouf, Banana Yamamoto, Amy Kempel, Keri Hulme. Haruki Murakami has had the most influence on my own writing in recent years. 2. What is the most memorable short story … Read More
Spineless Wonders asks Laurie Steed
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder? There’s been much written about love being either romantic or dystopic, or first one and then the other. I wanted to explore the idea of love occurring at the end of a relationship; how trust, quite often, comes in letting … Read More
Spineless Wonders Audio
EARWORMS Breaking the Silence When I first began thinking about Spineless Wonders back in late 2010, I envisaged the three platforms, PRINT DIGITAL AUDIO. At last, we are now offering short Australian stories as audio files or, as we like to say, as Earworms, stories that stay with you. In writing this blog post, we … Read More
Spineless Wonders asks Keri Glastonbury
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder? I was travelling in China and India in 2009. After many years of teaching creative writing and facilitating other students’ work I felt very unsure of myself as a poet, but could feel myself being stimulated again by cultural differences … Read More
Spineless Wonders asks Jo Langdon
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder? I can’t remember a particular moment of inspiration, but I suppose the story ‘Pause’ formed around ideas about memory and absence, and the accumulation of a few images: bits of gravel and Redhead matches, tree frogs and tropical fruits, blue … Read More
Spineless Wonders asks Stu Hatton
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder? ‘meds’ I wrote a few weeks after I began taking a medication for depression and anxiety. ‘refuse’ arose from some diary-like jottings in my notebook. It was begun many years ago and has been chipped away at, smoothed and roughed … Read More
Spineless Wonders asks Anna Couani
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder? The piece called The Old Manuscript was inspired by two things, one was a sculpture I saw in the 2012 Sculpture by the Sea show in Bondi and the other was thoughts about an unfinished manuscript I started writing many years … Read More
What we talk about when we talk about collections and anthologies.Part 1: The Reviewers
I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat. Sylvester Stallone It’s not often that I find myself thinking the same way as Sly, but when The First Tuesday Book Club recently turned down my suggestion to discuss our anthology, Escape, on their … Read More