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Helen Thurloe is an award-winning Australian writer, with her poems and essays widely published. Promising Azra is her first novel. To support its completion, the project was awarded a mentorship from the Children's Book Council of Australia (NSW), as well as two residential fellowships through the NSW Writers' Centre, and Varuna The National Writers House. Her day jobs have included political staffer, public relations consultant, teacher of the Alexander Technique, and furniture sales and marketing. Helen has lived in both Brazil and Britain, but Sydney is now home
'Reading Promising Azra prompted me to revisit stories I have heard too many times to count. Forced marriage is not bound to a certain culture or religion, it's an epidemic affecting children from many backgrounds. For real change to be possible, it's important for us to hear these stories.' Dr Eman Sharobeem, Community Engagement Manager, SBS Azra is sixteen, smart and knows how to get what she wants. She thinks. When she wins a place in a national science competition, she thinks her biggest problem is getting her parents' permission to go. But she doesn't know they're busy arranging her marriage to an older cousin she's never met. In Pakistan. In just three months' time. Azra always thought she'd finish high school with her friends and then go on to study science, but now her dreams of university are suddenly overshadowed. Can she find a way to do what she wants, while keeping her parents happy? Or does being a good daughter mean sacrificing her freedom?
'An extremely important anthology' Tracey Spicer In October 2017, the hashtag MeToo went viral. Since then we've watched controversy erupt around Geoffrey Rush, Germaine Greer and Junot Díaz. We've talked about tracking the movement back via Helen Garner, Rosie Batty and Hannah Gadsby. We've discussed #NotAllMen, toxic masculinity and trolls. We've seen the #MeToo movement evolve and start to accuse itself - has it gone too far? Is it enough? What does it mean in this country? And still, women are not safe from daily, casual sexual harassment and violence. In this collection thirty-five contributors share their own #MeToo stories, analysis and commentary to survey the movement in an Austral...
Over the last five years, from the #Me Too Movement to same-sex marriage, from devastating bush fires to the global pandemic, the online poetry journal Not Very Quiet has dedicated itself to publishing women's voices from across the globe. Not Very Quiet: The anthology selects poetry that has given voice to the social conscience of the community, constructions of lesbian and queer, the challenges posed to the social construction of gender, as well as the complexities and possibilities of the human condition.
Winner of the 2021 Press 53 Award for Poetry, Smile, or Else by Chanel Brenner, is a moving collection of elegiac poems dealing with the death of Brenner's six-year-old son, and her and her family's ongoing trek toward healing.
"Convincing Ground" pulses with love of country. In this powerful, lyrical and passionate new work Bruce Pascoe asks us to fully acknowledge our past and the way those actions continue to influence our nation today, both physically and intellectually. The book resonates with ongoing debates about identity, dispossession, memory and community. Pascoe draws on the past through a critical examination of major historical works and witness accounts and finds uncanny parallels between the techniques and language used there to today's national political stage. He has written the book for all Australians, as an antidote to the great Australian inability to deal respectfully with the nation's constructed Indigenous past. For Pascoe, the Australian character was not forged at Gallipoli, Eureka and the back of Bourke, but in the furnace of Murdering Flat, Convincing Ground and Werribee. He knows we can't reverse the past, but believes we can bring in our soul from the fog of delusion. Pascoe proposes a way forward, beyond shady intellectual argument and immature nationalism, with our strengths enhanced and our weaknesses acknowledged and addressed.
'I open the gate and walk into the field . . . As the sun pours a river of light down this valley, I realise there are hundreds and hundreds of trees and I've seen those silver leaves before, not here in Australia, but shimmering in the groves that grace the terraced hillsides of Tuscany.' When Adrienne's marketing company goes down, her lifestyle does too. She retreats from the city to the beautiful, abandoned olive grove once owned by her Italian grandparents. A 'tree change' isn't what Adrienne has in mind, however, and life in the country delivers some surprises as she confronts the past and learns the secrets of the Olive Sisters . . . Old loves, new loves, warm toast and rich traditions are all part of the delicious blend of this absorbing story.
It is a truth universally acknowledged . . . Esma is a modern Muslim woman with an age-old dilemma. She is well-educated, well-travelled and has excellent taste in music, but the hunt for Mr Right leads her to a number of Mr Wrongs. Together with wild-haired Ruby, principled Lisa, and drop-dead gorgeous Nirvana, Esma forms the No Sex in the City Club. Her quest for The One (or Mr Almost-Perfect) was never going to be easy, but soon enough it takes an unexpected and thrilling detour.