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More belated news! Back in May it was announced that my first collection of short stories, Hold Your Fire, will be published by Scribner Australia in 2021.
Here’s an article about it: https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2020/05/14/150581/scribner-acquires-wilsons-hold-your-fire/
And here’s the announcement from Simon & Schuster: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/p/scribner-acquires-wilson-short-stories
The collection should be available early-ish next year.
In the ongoing garbage fire that is the year of our lord 2020, I am delighted to belatedly mention that my short story ‘Hold Your Fire’ was freed from the slush pile and selected for publication in Granta.
It appears in Granta 151: Membranes, edited by Rana Dasgupta.
You can read an excerpt here.
Pleased to say that my prose poem, ‘Regency Romance,’ appears in The Australian Prose Poetry Anthology, which will be published later this month.
Available to pre-order from Melbourne University Press.
It previously appeared (with a matching poem, ‘Billionaire Romance’) in the Spring 2018 issue of Western Humanities Review, which you can check out here.
It’s an honour to have won the 2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize for my poem ‘Soft Serve’.
The poem is about the juicy yet apocryphal story that Margaret Thatcher invented soft serve ice cream.
Many thanks to the Hunter Writers Centre, prize sponsor the University of Newcastle, and judges Judy Johnson and Jaya Savige.
The prize anthology is available here.
Absolutely thrilled that my story ‘Tongue-Tied’ has won the 2019 Iowa Review Award in Fiction.
Here are some comments on the story from prize judge Rebecca Makkai: “‘Tongue-Tied’ had me uncomfortably pinned by the end of the first paragraph, and squirming by the end of the first page. I love a story where things happen, and this is a story where things both happen and don’t. A lot changes, and yet a lot is left unsaid, repressed . . . Add to that delicate balance an unusual point of view, two loaded relationships, and a sharp, subtle dose of humor, and I had to pick this story. This one will stay under my skin.”
The story will appear in the Winter 2019/2020 edition of The Iowa Review.
Really pleased that my short-short story ‘Frogs’ Legs’ was a finalist in the 2018 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest.
The story can be found in Volume 25 of Quarter After Eight.
My poem ‘Hippophobia’ has been awarded second prize in the 2018 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize.
The subject of ‘Hippophobia’ is Thomas Day’s infamous 18th century ‘experiment’ in which he took two girls from an orphanage and attempted to mould each of them into his ideal wife.
What a guy.
The poem appears in Issue 156 of Island Magazine.
Absolutely thrilled to announce that I have been signed by Kate Johnson of New York-based literary agency Mackenzie Wolf.
Kate chaired the judging panel for this year’s Bristol Short Story prize, where my story ‘Powerful Owl’ was awarded second place.
My response to this frankly astonishing news can be found here.
So pleased that my poem ‘The Memory of Snails’ has been awarded the 2018 Harri Jones Memorial Award.
The poem was written in response to a news story about artificial memories being implanted into snails. Read all about it.
This award is part of the Newcastle Poetry Prize. The full shortlist and winners can be found here.
‘The Memory of Snails’ appears in the 2018 Newcastle Poetry Prize anthology, ‘Buying Online’. I would be remiss if I failed to point out that it is available to buy………. online.
I’ll see myself out.
Delighted to learn that my story ‘Powerful Owl’ has been awarded second prize in the 2018 Bristol Short Story Prize.
Here’s how reviewer Eric Karl Anderson (aka Lonesome Reader) described the story (on Twitter): “‘Powerful Owl’…has an exquisite muted tension to it as a young woman turns from prey to predator”.
The story is available in the Bristol Short Story Prize anthology, which can be found here.
So ‘update website’ has been sitting politely on my to-do list for several months, meaning this news is several months out-of-date. Nevertheless! I am delighted to belatedly report that my short story ‘Break Character’ was commended in the 2018 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.
Full details can be found here.
Beyond delighted that my short story 'Animus' appears in the February issue of ELLE Australia!
Also I'm just generally thrilled that ELLE is publishing short fiction. As I said to my husband, 'I think this is the first time my work has been available in a supermarket.'
Please enjoy this staged photograph:
Did I buy multiple copies? You betcha. #shameless
Bonjour everybody!
And particularly those kicking some tyres in Canbox next Wednesday (February 8, 2017).
I'll be reading at Poetry at the House, which (as the name suggests) is held at University House. It's on from 7.30pm. Details can be found here.
I'm hoping to read some new poems - topics may include phosphorus necrosis, hippophobia, and something Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have said, but didn't.
Be there and be square.
I'm delighted to be one of the guest poets at this year's Castlemaine Poetry Festival, which runs from 21st-23rd October.
I'll be giving a reading and also holding a workshop. It's in a tea room and everything. Would love to see you there!
Festival program and tix can be found here.
Really thrilled to have a poem in the latest Going Down Swinging. It's called 'The Woman Who Turned Into Soap,' and is about a woman who turned into soap.
No really. Go see her in Philadelphia!
And while you're at it, maybe consider throwing a lobster GDS's way and picking up the anthology.
A poem about one of my favourite self-experimenters, Soviet physician Alexander Bogdanov, has co-won the 2016 Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize!
It's called 'Bloodwork'; the dude gave himself a whole lotta blood transfusions. Something was bound to go awry eventually.
You can read the poem over on the Griffith Review website.
The title of this post says it all, really, but for corroborating evidence:
https://articulation.arts.unimelb.edu.au/?p=5655
Hooray!
So pleased to hear that Not Fox Nor Axe has been shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award!
It's among some srsly fine company. Further info can be found here.
Last year I had the great good fortune to be selected as a winner of the Nat. Brut flash fiction contest, which was judged by Amy Hempel. The story is called 'The Leopard Next Door' and it can be found here (accompanied by a fairly irresistible image).
Aaaaand my story 'The Drydown' is included in 'Shibboleth & Other Stories', an anthology recently and handsomely published by Margaret River Press.
Meanwhile here I am babbling on to Laurie Steed, editor of said anthology, about some of the wacky stuff I like (medical history, T-Swift, bizarrely cosy British TV).
I'm delighted to be one of six poets commissioned to take part in The Red Room Company's Poetry Object 2016.
My poem, 'Kahlo's Moustache', can be read here.
The object I wrote in response to is this alebrije:
