Mrs Vickers was watching the six o’clock news, as she did every night, while sipping a Guinness and lemonade shandy. She liked the reader, Marcus Howell, whose deep voice was …
Threads of Silent Longing (Hasti Abbasi)
Bahar drinks a glass of water. A soft sensation starts to stir inside her. Still within her regular cycle, yet this time, it feels different. She gets out of bed, …
To Sing of War (Catherine McKinnon)
December 1944 1 Lotte Nialu She hears singing: one lone voice at first, clear and resonant, a tenor, then others join in, and the song rises and falls, until it …
Only One Son (Magan Magan)
Once Mohamed had a dream about his son. The dream kept him up until the early hours of the morning. He was caged under his blanket — battening his mind …
Rattle up the Road (Siân Darling)
Flesh and fat were luxuries of childhood, in that window before starvation was understood. My loose, thickened skin — coloured the same as my mama’s, who I’d never see again …
The Leaves (Jacqueline Rule)
The morning sky is flat, a smooth grey pebble. There’s a row of trees across from the house where the social worker’s car has stopped, the limbs are pitted and …
The Yellow Scarf (Gay Lynch)
‘The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it’ — Oscar Wilde, The Critic as an Artist (1891) Yellow is bold, resistant and grievous. Yellow is fat with …
A Father, a Daughter and the Sunshine State (Kylie A Hough)
This is the story I never wanted to write. You, me, and a wound I thought the Sunshine State would heal with grandkids, barramundi and gallons of water under the …
A thin stream of black ink (Catherine Hanrahan)
The vodka has done its job. The tremors in her hands have almost stopped. She opens the door of the flat and goes down the back stairs, feet ginger on …
Hustling the Hustlers (Jenny Hedley)
In July 2015, on a normal night’s work, a girl sat down next to me and urinated on her chair. I shoved the dancewear I was selling into suitcases to …