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EVENTS

6 April, Saturday, 6-7pm, Newcastle Writers Festival, ‘Celebrating Microlit’, NUSPACE X321. Free event. Info here.

17 April, Wednesday, 8pm, online event, ‘Remnant online launch’. Free event, register via Eventbrite link, here.

About Remnant

From Hazel Smith, author of Ecliptical

‘The anthology Remnant celebrates an engaging stylistic variety: the writers approach their subject matter through diverse forms, voices and narratorial distance. Some pieces have a compelling story curve that leads to a revelatory or enigmatic ending. Others are irrepressibly surreal, some startingly poetic, some metafictional, some performative. Or they employ non-literary techniques to literary ends.

This anthology, therefore, is a must-read for lovers of microfiction, those intrigued by the multi-faceted implications of the remnant, and all who embrace the latest in literary experimentation and fine writing.

From the editor, Cassandra Atherton

It has been an honour to judge the 2024 Newcastle Writers Festival/joanne burns Microlit Award for another year and to curate the anthology of microfiction and prose poems which contains the finalists from the award along with contributions from invited authors. The quality and inventiveness of the writing in Remnant is testimony to the ability of this diminutive yet powerful literary form.

Thank you to all the writers who submitted microlit, it was a pleasure to read your writing and I hope you will continue to write and experiment with the form. Congratulations to the writers who were shortlisted and whose works have been published in this anthology and to the winners of the National and Hunter competition, Emma Ashmere and Sally Egan, respectively.

Thank you to Rosemarie Milsom, director of the Newcastle Writers Festival, to program manager, Amy Lovat and to the festival team for the continued support and sponsorship of the award. We have been very fortunate to have been able to launch the microlit anthologies, to curate lively panel sessions and to present microlit in visual, audio-visual and interactive formats at this wonderful annual festival.

Thank you to the commissioned national and international writers Andrew Melrose, Anne Caldwell, Bille Travalini, Jen Webb, John Kinsella, Julia Prendergast, Katharine Coles, Paul Hetherington, Richard Holt and Shady Cosgrove. Collectively, they have provided a dazzling array of microlit teasing out the theme of ‘play’ in sleek, witty and indelible ways.

Thank you to both Richard Holt for his artwork and to Bettina Kaiser for producing another gorgeous cover for the annual anthology. Much gratitude to Hazel Smith for her wonderful introduction to the anthology as well as her insights into the theme of ‘remnant’. Thank you to joanne burns, after whom this award is named. joanne is Australia’s most famous practitioner of microlit and hybridity and is an early proponent of the form.

Finally, thank you to the team at Spineless Wonders and to publisher Bronwyn Mehan for her passion for the microlit form. I always enjoy collaborating with Spineless Wonders to take the microlit form to new national and international readerships and audiences.

Contributors include:

Alex Skovron | Alison Whipp | Andrew Melrose | Angela Costi | Anne Caldwell | Anne Casey |Anne Elvey | Ben Cameron-Smith | Beth Spencer | Billie Travalini | Brenda Proudfoot | Brenda Saunders |Carolyn Abbs | Cedar Whelan | Charles D’Anastasia |Chris Cody |Christine Burrows |Claire Gaskin |Danielle Baldock |Dave Drayton | Deborah Van Heekeren | Dominique Hecq |Emma Ashmere |Gideon McDonald | Helen Hopcroft | Hilary Hewitt |Jane Crowley | Jen Webb | John Kinsella | Jonathan Cant |Jude Ridge | Julia Prendergast  | Julie Chevalier | Juliette Bernstein |KA Rees | Katharine Coles | Kylie A Hough |Leone Gabrielle | Lili Pâquet |Linda Carr |Michael Farrell |Moya Costello |PS Cottier | Paul Hetherington | Richard Holt | Ronald Araña Atilano|Rosemary Stride | Sally Egan | Sallyanne Scotton Moonga | Sandra Renew |Scott-Patrick Mitchell | Shady Cosgrove | Shey Marque |Susan Fealy |Vi Trang

CASSANDRA ATHERTON is a widely anthologised and award-winning Australian prose poet. She is the successful recipient of many national and international grants including Australia Council, Copyright Agency and VicArts grants and is currently working on a book of prose poetry on the atomic bomb with funding from the Australia Council. Her books of prose poetry include Exhumed, (2016) Trace, (2016) Pre-Raphaelite (2018), Leftovers (2020) and the co-authored Fugitive Letters (2020). She is a commissioning editor of Westerly magazine, series editor for Spineless Wonders Microlit anthologies and associate editor at MadHat Press (USA). She co-authored Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2020) and co-edited the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne University Press, 2020). With Paul Hetherington, she is co-writing a book, Ekphrastic Poetry: An Introduction for Princeton UP. Cassandra is a Professor of Writing and Literature and currently acting Head of the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Melbourne Australia.

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