***Highly commended in the 2016 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript*** 'I need to be a writer, ' Ruth Park told her future husband, D'Arcy Niland, on the eve of their marriage. 'That's what I need from life.' She was not the only one. At a time when women were considered incapable of being 'real' artists, a number of precocious girls in Australian cities were weighing their chances and laying their plans. A Free Flame explores the lives of four such women, Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Hewett, Christina Stead and Ruth Park, each of whom went on to become a notable Australian writer. They were very different women from very different backgrounds, but they shared a sense of urgency around their vocation-their 'need' to be a writer-that would not let them rest. Weaving biography, literary criticism and cultural history, this book looks at the ways in which these women laid siege to the artist's identity, and ultimately remade it in their own image. *** "Ann-Marie Priest writes with admirable clarity and a strong sense of appreciation for her subjects. A Free Flame weaves fascinating biographical details and critical insights into an examination of the various ways in which these talented artists negotiated the tension between their sense of vocation and the hindering cultural expectations they faced as women." --James Ley, critic and judge of the Dorothy Hewett Award [Subject: Non-Fiction, Biography, Gender Studies]

A fierce and beautiful novel about coming of age in a dying world As she faces the open wilderness of adulthood, our narrator finds that the world around her is coming undone. She works as an emergency dispatch operator, trapped in constant crisis as fires and floods rage across Australia. Her personal life is buckling under her self-destructive obsessions - she drinks heaily, sleeps with strangers, wanders the streets of Sydney at night, and pursues a disastrous affair with an ex-lover. Desperate and adrift, she yearns for change. Building to a tightly controlled bushfire of ecological and personal crisis, The Inland Sea is a fierce and beautiful novel about the search for refuge in a state of emergency. Madeleine Watts grew up in Sydney, Australia and has lived in New York since 2013. She has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, and her fiction has been published in The White Review and The Lifted Brow. Her essays have appeared in The Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her novella, Afraid of Waking It, was awarded the 2015 Griffith Review Novella Prize. The Inland Sea is her first novel.

Dreamer, Wisher, Liar is a heartwarming story about one girl's transformative summer full of friendship, secret magic, and family. Fans of Rebecca Stead will enjoy Charise Mericle Harper's funny and poignant novel. When her best friend is moving away and her mom has arranged for some strange little girl to come and stay with them, Ash—who is petrified of change and new people—is expecting the worst summer of her life. Then seven-year-old Claire shows up. Armed with a love of thrift-store clothes and an altogether too-sunny disposition, Claire proceeds to turn Ash's carefully constructed life upside down. While every part of Ash's life seems to be disrupted, she must protect a carefully hidden secret: She has discovered a magical jar in her basement. It's a wish jar, full of someone's old wishes—and it has the power to send her back in time and provide a window into another friendship between two girls. Discovering her own connection to the girls' story shows Ash that her life is full of surprises and friends she never saw coming.

This book is the first to examine gender and violence in Australian literature. It argues that literary texts by Australian women writers offer unique ways of understanding the social problem of gendered violence, bringing this often private and suppressed issue into the public sphere. It draws on the international field of violence studies to investigate how Australian women writers challenge the victim paradigm and figure women’s agencies. In doing so, it provides a theoretical context for the increasing number of contemporary literary works by Australian women writers that directly address gendered violence, an issue that has taken on urgent social and political currency. By analysing Australian women’s literary representations of gendered violence, this book rethinks victimhood and agency, particularly from a feminist perspective. One of its major innovations is that it examines mainstream Australian women’s writing alongside that of Indigenous and minoritised women. In doing so it provides insights into the interconnectedness of Australia’s diverse settler, Indigenous and diasporic histories in chapters that examine intimate partner violence, violence against Indigenous women and girls, family violence and violence against children, and the war and political violence.

What do you do when your husband claims to be madly in love with you, but doesn’t desire you sexually? When your therapist is more interested in opening an online sex-toy shop with your husband than in saving your marriage? Do you try yet another counsellor, get divorced or settle for a sexless marriage? Lee Kofman, rebellious daughter of ultra-orthodox Jews, has always sought her own way. True to her Bohemian dream where love can coexist with sexual freedom, she decided to experiment with an open marriage . . . despite the fact that her previous non-monogamous relationship ended in disaster. Our cultural mores suggest that love without monogamy is impossible, but Lee hoped she could do better the second time round and embarked on a personal exploration to find out whether she could save her marriage while being non-monogamous in an ethical way. For several months she talked to swingers, polyamorists, cross-dressers, suburban families, artists and migrants—in short, to anyone who has ever been involved in an unconventional relationship. Set during Lee's first years in Australia, it is also the story of migration, and an exploration of the eternal conflict between our desire for security, but also for foreign places—in love and elsewhere. The Dangerous Bride tells the story of her quest.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Seven Little Australians" by Ethel Sybil Turner. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

From the bestselling author of The Land Girls comes a beautifully realised novel that speaks to the true history and real experiences of post-war Australian women. Sydney 1945 The war is over, the fight begins. The war is over and so are the jobs (and freedoms) of tens of thousands of Australian women. The armaments factories are making washing machines instead of bullets and war correspondent Tilly Galloway has hung up her uniform and been forced to work on the women's pages of her newspaper - the only job available to her - where she struggles to write advice on fashion and make-up. As Sydney swells with returning servicemen and the city bustles back to post-war life, Tilly finds her world is anything but normal. As she desperately waits for word of her prisoner-of-war husband, she begins to research stories about the lives of the underpaid and overworked women who live in her own city. Those whose war service has been overlooked; the freedom and independence of their war lives lost to them. Meanwhile Tilly's waterside worker father is on strike, and her best friend Mary is struggling to cope with the stranger her own husband has become since being liberated from Changi a broken man. As strikes rip the country apart and the news from abroad causes despair, matters build to a heart-rending crescendo. Tilly realises that for her the war may have ended, but the fight is just beginning... PRAISE 'A richly crafted novel that graphically depicts life during those harrowing years. A touching tale and an enthralling read.' Reader's Digest 'A powerful and moving book.' Canberra Weekly

Learn to tell stories that have the power to inspire, motivate, and sell Storytelling in business is a skill that's rarely taught—and often forgotten. But it gives those who get it right the power to inspire and engage people more than any pie chart or spreadsheet ever will. Stories foster a deeply human connection, and Power Stories: The 8 Stories You Must Tell to Build an Epic Business gives readers the skills they need to master this lost art to make sales and seal deals. Whether it's in person or online, storytelling is an influential and persuasive tool. This book reveals how to discover the stories sitting under your nose and harness them for your business. From power stories readers need to know to how to turn prospects into customers, and customers into raving fans, the book covers exactly how and when to employ the power of storytelling, and is packed with proven strategies and real-life examples that bring the key concepts to life. Explains why storytelling is the ultimate tool for business success, revealing the 8 stories that any professional needs to be able to tell Includes proven strategies, tools, and techniques for mastering the lost art of storytelling in the business world, including the use of online tools and platforms Features real-life examples of businesses and entrepreneurs from around the world who have used storytelling to grow and thrive Written by Valerie Khoo, a respected small business commentator and successful entrepreneur, Power Stories gives professionals everywhere the tools they need to craft and tell great stories to create a competitive advantage.

Libby is determined to stay on her no-man fast: no more romance, no more cheating men, no more heartbreak. But in the city of love there is no escaping fate … A hilarious and heartfelt romantic comedy from bestselling Wiradyuri author, Anita Heiss. Libby has given up on romance. After all, she has her three best girlfriends and two cats to keep her company at night, and her high-powered job at the National Aboriginal Gallery in Canberra to occupy her day – isn't that enough? But when fate gives Libby the chance to work in Paris at the Musée du Quai Branly, she's thrown out of her comfort zone and into a city full of culture, fashion and love. Surrounded by thousands of gorgeous men, romance has suddenly become a lot more tempting.

In May 1835 in a Sydney courtroom, a slight, balding man named John Dow stood charged with forgery. The prisoner shocked the room by claiming he was Edward, Viscount Lascelles, eldest son of the powerful Earl of Harewood. The Crown alleged he was a confidence trickster and serial impostor. Was this really the heir to one of Britain's most spectacular fortunes? Part Regency mystery, part imperial history, A Swindler's Progress is an engrossing tale of adventure and deceit across two worlds—British aristocrats and Australian felons—bound together in an emerging age of opportunity and individualism, where personal worth was battling power based on birth alone. The first historian to unravel the mystery of John Dow and Edward Lascelles, Kirsten McKenzie illuminates the darker side of this age of liberty, when freedom could mean the freedom to lie both in the far-flung outposts of empire and within the established bastions of British power. The struggles of the Lascelles family for social and political power, and the tragedy of their disgraced heir, demonstrate that British elites were as fragile as their colonial counterparts. In ways both personal and profound, McKenzie recreates a world in which Britain and the empire were intertwined in the transformation of status and politics in the nineteenth century.