From thousands of entries, judges, Alice Pung and Christos Tsiolkas, have chosen 30 stories to be included in this year’s anthology. The title of the collection refers to both emerging writers and the desired theme: writers were invited to pen a non-fiction memoir with ‘emergence’ as their starting point.
The winning entry, ‘The usual’, by Tessa Piper is a disturbingly raw commentary on young girls and the male gaze. This story sits above the others as a deserving winner. In the foreword the judges remark on this piece and single out four others for commendation. My concern is that those other four then run consecutively after the winner … what then of the other published entries? Are they merely gap-fillers? The foreword (unwittingly) gives the impression that the entries have been published in descending order of merit. Pity the sixth … and the 30th.
Let’s assume then that the first five entries are good (they are) and give the remaining 25 a chance to shine. ‘Mah jong instructions for life’ plays with structure, using rules and strategy of the tile and dice game to mirror Vanessa Yenson’s health battle. Similarly, ‘Unplugged’ has an unusual form, as Hannah McPierzie deals with deafness, with silence rendered by blank space on the page.
Fittingly, the Emergence stories emerge from diverse backgrounds. Many of the stories deal with childhood, sexuality and relationships with parents and/or the wider/whiter community. There’s trauma and survival and, above all, there’s undeniable talent in all the entries.
Now in its third year, the anthology features stories by thirty emerging writers, each speaking to the theme of ‘Emergence’ and each offering a unique snapshot of contemporary Australia. Judged by Alice Pung and Christos Tsiolkas, the stories explore themes such as sense of place, family, loss, culture, sexual awakening and the abiding connections to people and place that make us who we are. Told with utterly fresh perspectives and a rich vein of literary talent, these stories are an invitation into the unique worlds of everyday Australians.
Hardie Grant and SBS champion the voices of a diverse Australia, and support the discovery and development of emerging talent to contribute to Australian storytelling.
Martin Flanagan grew up in northwest Tasmania and was sent to boarding school at the ridiculously young age of 10. This memoir, concentrating on his school years, doesn’t name the school, and teachers are given pseudonyms. It was a boys-only Catholic boarding school and one quarter of its teaching staff were convicted of sexual abuse. Flanagan wasn’t among those sexually abused, but the culture of bullying by both teachers and fellow students affected every student. He wishes he’d done more, describing himself as a ‘mute witness to other kids’ pain and humiliation’.
His six years at the school are ranked as the worst of his life. His first three years were marked by bullying and living in terror of being singled out by the brothers for punishment. The final three years were better, but his heightened responsibility also found him having to witness the aftermath, and subsequently report the abuse of younger students.
Corporal punishment in his school years – late ’60s to early ’70s – was marked by the sting of a cane. The rector, given the name ‘Herman’ by Flanagan, ‘moved like a black chess piece carrying its own brand of silent terror’. Flanagan had his older brother, Tim, as his protector and found joy in sport. (A career as an award-winning sports journalist followed.)
Flanagan wishes he was braver then – but he was so much younger than his contemporaries. He fills his empty honour board with the names of those students who displayed bravery by standing up, either for themselves or others. His writing is gentle yet powerful. The Empty Honour Board is a memoir masterclass.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Martin Flanagan was born in 1955 and graduated in law from the University of Tasmania in 1975. He has written many books, a play and two film treatments. From 1985 to 2017, he wrote for the Melbourne Age on sport and other subjects.
Have you ever wondered how polar bears stay warm? What about why there are dark spots on the moon? How about if dolphins talk to each other? What about if something lives at the bottom of the ocean? Well now there is a book which can answer these questions and so many more for you! Hailing from the team at the Natural History Museum of London, Do Penguins’ Feet Freeze?is a quirky collection of questions and answers focussing on the natural world.
I’ve always wondered why rain has a distinct smell, thanks to this book I have learnt that the scent is known as petrichor, and it is made when oils from plants combine with a special molecule called geosmin. Geosmin is made by special algae and bacteria. As it turns out our noses are especially sensitive to it when it combines with the plant’s oils, and that is why we can smell petrichor every time it rains.
Each page in this book poses a new question about the natural world and then answers it with fun images and informative text.
It is fun, real and perfect for curious young minds who have lots of questions about the natural world which surrounds us. They will be excited to share the new things they learn with everyone around them which to me is a win-win for any adult out there looking for a new read for their bedtime repertoire!
Wild and weird Q&As about the natural world that show that facts can be stranger than fiction! Do Penguins’ Feet Freeze? is a wonderfully weird collection of questions and answers about our natural world, written by the expert team at the Natural History Museum, London.
Packed with colourful images throughout, this book reveals:
Why do rabbits eat their own poo?
How do polar bears stay warm?
Can dolphins talk to each other?
Why does rain smell?
How clever is an octopus?
Which animal has spines in its throat?
Why do goats scream and faint?
Will an asteroid hit Earth?
Why are flamingos pink?
Do birds sneeze?
Why do honeybees dance?
… and many more cool and quirky facts that prove nature is often stranger than fiction!
Australia’s south-west is home to the richest flora diversity on the continent, but it is also one of the world’s ‘biodiversity hotspots’, where high concentrations of native species are experiencing ‘exceptional loss of habitat’. With particular focus on eucalypts, ecologist Viki Cramer outlines the detrimental effect of Western Australia’s timber industry from 1850s to 1920s when millions of acres of jarrah forest were cut down, followed by further felling due to bauxite mining. She describes the environmental effect of land clearing to create the state’s wheatbelt.
The author’s knowledge and love of native gums is palpable, as she interacts with experts and conservationists, exploring pockets of diverse woodland and forest. Cramer highlights the devastating frequency of bush fires in recent years and the inability of many species of eucalypt to regenerate, before the next inferno hits. This book is heart-wrenching to read about such loss of native habitat.
But there is hope with projects such as Gondwana Link, a project that is working to reconnect over 1000 kilometres of natural landscape from the Margaret River to Kalgoorlie and the Great Western Woodlands. Aboriginal ranger and conservation programs are creating a way forward for the custodianship of Country. Cramer’s final words are about having a love for our homes, and a responsibility to care for them, but ‘not just for the landscapes that sustain us spiritually and emotionally, but also those that sustain us materially’ – that provide our food, timber and minerals for our day-to-day lives.
Viki Cramer is a writer and ecologist who lives on Whadjuk Noongar Country in the south-west of Western Australia, home to some of the most extraordinary and diverse plant life on the planet.
She is a PhD-trained ecologist who spent the better part of two decades pondering the inner lives of plants and their relationships with each other and the soil they grow in. Viki has lived and worked in the mulga lands, brigalow belt, eucalypt woodlands and subtropical forests of Queensland, the monsoon vine forests of the Northern Territory, and the eucalypt forests and woodlands of Western Australia.
As a science writer, Viki has worked with Nature Research Partnership and Custom Media, Stem Matters, 10 Deserts Project, Bush Heritage Australia, CSIRO’s ECOS, the Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia and the Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub. Her science journalism has been published by Ensia and Scientific American. Her non-fiction story ‘No change coming’ was selected for inclusion in the 2016 Radio National Earshot documentary Hot Summer Land. In 2021, Viki was awarded a Dahl Fellowship from Eucalypt Australia. The Memory of Trees is her first book.
In Hands of Time we get Rebecca Struther’s highly personalised take on the history of time measurement. This is more than just an account of the various devices used to measure time – sundials, water clocks, candles and ultimately mechanical clocks – because the mere fact that people measured time at all tells you quite a lot about the kind of society they lived in.
Sundials were located in town squares suggesting a need for coordination; Plato invented a water clock and King Alfred measured his time using candles that burnt in 20-minute increments, suggesting he was a busy guy; hourglasses can be used for navigation in all weather. Ring dials, portable sundials, were invented in the 16th century – the pace of life was picking up.
The first recognisable clocks were invented in the Muslim world in the 9th century and were powered by water. Water however can freeze or evaporate and has to be manually replaced after it runs out. The first fully mechanical clock was invented in the 14th century and was powered by an unspooling rope attached to a heavy weight – in a tower. The genius invention that made this practical was called a verge escarpment which controlled the rate of descent of the weight and communicated that motion to the clock mechanism which initially was a striking bell rather than moving hands on a dial.
As the course of the knowledge of astronomy developed rapidly so did the need for accurate time measurement.
At the same time accurate time measurement was essential to navigation. The next major step was the pendulum – used in a working clock by Christiaan Huygens and then the mainspring made a portable clock possible. The world’s first watch – hour hand only – was invented in Nuremburg in about 1505.
Having mastered the mechanics, humans proceeded to turn the watch into a collectible. For a long time – no pun intended – the watch was not particularly accurate but it was a status symbol. And the precision engineering required in attempts to improve watches inevitably flowed through to other areas, notably in the accurate determination of longitude.
Struthers takes the story up to the present – atomic clocks, quartz watches, digital watches. You can tell her heart isn’t in it and the advent of smart watches doesn’t cheer her up though she clings to the hope that just as e-books have not supplanted the real thing people will still want the analogue watch. Nevertheless, it does seem likely that the mechanical watch – a mechanism of astonishing ingenuity and often of considerable beauty, has run out of time.
Reviewed by Grant Hansen
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Struthersis a watchmaker and historian from Birmingham. She co-founded her workshop, Struthers Watchmakers, in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter in 2012. Rebecca and her watchmaker husband, Craig, use heritage equipment and traditional artisan techniques to restore antiquarian pieces and craft bespoke watches. They are among the last handful of watchmakers in the UK making watches from scratch. In 2017, Rebecca became the first watchmaker in British history to earn a PhD in horology. She lives in Staffordshire with Craig, her dog Archie, cats Isla and Alabama, and Morrissey the mouse.
Samantha Irby is an American blogger, essayist, comedian and television writer. She is famous for her excoriating wit … generally at her own expense. The title comes from describing the genetic expectations of a child (one she’s never going to have) and passing her worst characteristics on to them. From her writing I can envisage some hostility, but there is nothing ‘quiet’ about this writer if the profusion of exclamation marks and TALKING IN CAPS is anything to go by. (Seventeen exclamation marks after one word alone.)
The first essay, ‘I Like It!’ is strategic and worthwhile coming back to later. Irby’s sensibility is rooted in the mundane, with an unabashed mix of low- and lower-brow issues. Her love of the Dave Mathews Band is evident, as is her adoration of all things Sex and the City in the exclamation littered, ‘Superfan!!!!!!!’ (see?).
Her body – self-described as ‘fat’ – is the subject of most of the essays. In ‘Body Horror!’ we learn a little too much about her bladder, then later about her pornography preferences, her bowels, and her allergic reactions. Oversharing seems to be a hallmark of her writing. Her wife, Kirsten, appears often, her family rarely. However, there is the tragi-comedy of her family and her mother’s last words to her in, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’.
The very first line in Quietly Hostile, ‘This is not an advice book’ reads as a disclaimer, but the essay, ‘How to Look Cool in Front of Teens?’ contains (mostly) excellent advice. There’ll be many instances where you might question her life choices, but referring back to that first essay, her response would always be, ‘I like it!’. The exclamation mark is mandatory.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samantha Irby is a New York Times-bestselling author and writes the blog bitches gotta eat. Samantha is an American blogger, essayist, comedian and television writer.
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