Previously Shared Homes (trivia): I always love seeing if I've shared previous homes with writers. This time around Claire Corbett tops the list as it's the third publication we've been in together; and it's the second with Mark Smith, and Michelle Cahill. Sincere apologies if I've missed out on any of the other writers.
Editor and Author Bios (from Margaret River Press Website):
Michelle Cahill‘s short stories, Letter to Pessoa won the UTS Glenda Adams Award, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing and was shortlisted in the Steele Rudd Queensland Literary Awards. She won the Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize and was shortlisted in the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize. She was a Fellow at Kingston Writing School, a Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing at UNC, Charlotte and a Fellow at Hawthornden Castle. She is an award-winning poet and critic. Her essays have appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, Southerly, Westerly and The Weekend Australian.
Emily Brewin is a Melbourne-based author and educator. Her first novel, Hello, Goodbye, was released in 2017 with Allen & Unwin. Her second, Small Blessings, came out in February 2019 with the same publisher. She has been awarded an Australian Society of Authors mentorship for her fiction writing, and undertook a Bundanon Trust artist residency and a Moreland writers’ residency in 2018 to develop her third novel, The Piano. Emily’s short stories have been short listed for a number of awards, including the 2019 Margaret River Short Story Competition. She has written for Feminartsy, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings and Mamamia.
Claire Corbett has had stories, essays and journalism published in journals including Picador New Writing, SMH, The Monthly, Griffith Review, Overland, Southerly, Antipodes, Science Fiction Film and Television and Best Australian Stories 2014 and 2015. Her first novel, When We Have Wings (Allen &Unwin), was shortlisted for the 2012 Barbara Jefferis Award and shortlisted for the 2012 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction and published overseas. Watch Over Me, her second novel, was published by A&U in 2017. She is writing her third novel. She teaches Creative Writing at UTS, is on the Board of Varuna, the National Writers’ House, and is the new fiction editor of Overland Journal.
Darryl R. Dymock enjoys writing short fiction, is a winner of the Roly Sussex Short Story award, and has been published elsewhere including in Griffith Review and most recently in the anthology, Within/Without These Walls. He is also the author of five narrative non-fiction books, including Hustling Hinkler and The Chalkies. In his other life he is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Griffith University, Brisbane. Darryl lives in Brisbane with his wife and his laptop, and says that in any writing the challenge is always the beginning, the middle and the end.
K. W. George is a writer from Brisbane. She has been published in a number of journals including Meanjin, Going Down Swinging, and The Big Issue. This is her fourth appearance in a Margaret River Press Anthology, which she believes is a record of some kind—but who’s counting?
Justine Hyde is a library director, writer and critic who lives in Melbourne. Her fiction, essays and reviews are published in The Age, The
Australian, The Saturday Paper, Kill Your Darlings, The Lifted Brow, Meanjin and Seizure.
Jenni Mazaraki is a writer and visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia. She is currently working on her first novel, an extract of which was shortlisted for the 2017 Deborah Cass Prize. Her poetry has been highly commended in The Bridport Prize 2018 and her short stories have been shortlisted for prizes including the Write Around the Murray award 2017. Her poetry is included in the anthology #MeToo: Stories from the Australian movement published by Picador in May 2019.
Rachel McEleney‘s short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Seizure, Ghostly StringyBark Anthology, Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic StudiesandAn Alphabetical Amulet Anthology. Her poetry has appeared on the UWA Poets’ Corner in Perth. Rachel lived in several countries before settling in the southwest of Western Australia. The southwest landscape has inspired her writing and she likes to spend a lot of time in the bush, particularly in spring so she can search for orchids. She is a PhD candidate at Edith Cowan University’s South West Campus.
Audrey Molloy was born in Dublin and grew up in rural Ireland. She now lives in Sydney, where she works as an optometrist and writer. Her poetry has been widely published, most recently in Meanjin, Cordite, Overland, Australian Poetry Anthology, Rabbit, Southerly, The Moth, The Irish Times and Magma. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for The Southern Cross Short Story Competition and has been published in The Blue Nib. Audrey’s work has been nominated for the Forward Prize and she is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2018.
Catherine Noske is a lecturer in Creative Writing and editor of Westerly at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on contemporary Australian place-making. She has been awarded the A.D. Hope Prize, twice received the Elyne Mitchell Prize for Rural Women Writers, and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award (2015). Her first novel is forthcoming with Picador.
Since 2011, Perth writer, Anthony Panegyres, has had works featured in The Best Australian Stories 2014, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2011, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2015, Overland 204 (a story short listed for the Aurealis Award), Overland 214, Meanjin Vol.3 2013, The Guardian, Dreaming of Djinn and several other homes, including the award winning anthologies Bloodlines and At the Edge. He is currently a doctoral candidate at UWA.
Emily Paull is a writer, blogger, editor and former bookseller from Western Australia. Her work has appeared in
Westerly as well as two previous Margaret River anthologies. Her debut collection of short stories will be published by Margaret River Press later in 2019. You can find out more about Emily at
www.emilypaull.com.
Kathy Prokhovnik is currently working on her second novel and a narrative non-fiction history of Sydney. She
blogs in two threads: ‘Sydney snaps’ and ‘At the farm’. Awards for her short stories include: highly commended in the 2018 and 2017 KSP Short Fiction Awards; runner-up in 2016. Winner of the 2016 Joyce Parkes Women Writers Prize and the 1988 Olga Masters Short Story Competition, University of Queensland Press Award. She has had short stories published in the
Seizure ‘Flashers’ series, in
Certifiable Truths (Allen & Unwin, 1998),
Meanjin,
Westerly and
Hecate.
K.A. Rees writes poetry and short fiction. Her poems and short stories have been included by Red Room Company, Rochford Street Review, Yalobusha Review, Review of Australian Fiction, Australian Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review, among others. In 2012, Kate was the Café Poet in Residence at the State Library of NSW. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of the 2017 Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction and runner-up in the 2018 Peter Cowan Short Story Award. She is a 2019 Varuna fellowship holder for her manuscript of short fiction. Kate lives with her family in Sydney.
Mirandi Riwoe’s novella The Fish Girl won Seizure’s Viva la Novella V and was shortlisted for The Stella Prize. She is the author of two crime novels and is prose editor for Peril Magazine. Her work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, Review of Australian Fiction, Shibboleth and Other Stories and Best Summer Stories. Mirandi has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies (QUT).
Kit Scriven has been published in Island and short story anthologies. He won the Olga Master Short Story Award in 2016 and 2017, and the SALA Short Story Prize in 2016. He has been highly commended or shortlisted in several other short story competitions.
Mark Smith lives on Victoria’s Surf Coast. His debut novel, The Road To Winter, was published in 2016. The sequel, Wilder Country, won the 2018
Australian Indie Book Award for YA. Mark is also an award winning writer of short fiction, with credits including the 2015 Josephine Ulrick
Literature Prize and the 2013 Alan Marshall Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Review of Australian Fiction,
The Big Issue, The Victorian Writer and The Australian.
Andrew Sutherland is a Queer writer and theatre practitioner working between Western Australia and Singapore. Theatre works include Poorly Drawn Shark, Unveiling: Gay Sex for Endtimes, Baby Girl, Chrysanthemum Gate, and Ragnarok. He was awarded Overland‘s Fair Australia Poetry Prize 2017 and selected as a poet for Westerly’s Writers’ Development Program 2018. His poetry and prose can be found in various publications including Visible Ink, Suburban Review, Muse/A, Bosie, and From Whispers to Roars.
Jem Tyley-Miller is a crime writer from Bacchus Marsh who sees life through a magical realist lens. A 2018 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, Jem works casually directing extras to fund her very serious writing habit and co-organises the Peter Carey Short Story Award in her spare time. You can read more of her writing in Spike, the Meanjin blog.
Lynette Washington is a writer, editor, publisher and teacher of creative and professional writing. Her stories have been published widely and performed at events such as Spineless Wonders Presents and Quart Short Literary Readings. In 2014 she edited the story collection, Breaking Beauty. In 2017 she co-edited the story collection, Crush. Her debut, Plane Tree Drive, was Highly Commended in the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and shortlisted for the MUBA.
The Sky Falls Down: An Anthology of Loss Ed. Gina Mercer & Terry Whitebeach will have its first launch at Fullers Bookshop on the 26th June at 5:30pm in the editors' home state of Tasmania.
Congrats to all involved. I'm really looking forward to reading all the stories, but especially Mark Smith's as I loved his work, "Sugar Bag Dreamin' Country" in Best Australian Stories 2014 
Starting with the very small down side, only a couple of reads truly disappointed: by the time I read the The Warlord of Mars, the pulpy road's gloss of the initial novel in Burroughs' Mars Trilogy had worn very thin; the other disappointment was Aleppo, which had my favourite historian resort to chapters that were entirely primary source extracts. Mansel might have been under a tight timeline or intense publishing pressure as Aleppo is not a smidgen of the quality of his other works. His usual narrative edge is also sadly absent.
I'm a huge fan of Yates' shorter work, in fact I've read all of his stories, but I had delayed reading Revolutionary Road and his other longer works – perhaps I didn't want them to take the shine off his short stories. But I was blown away, once again, by Yates. Although I should note that my book club was far less enthusiastic about RR. 
And at the other end of the spectrum, in a more controlled, realist manner, Rebecca Lee's Bobcat and Other Stories is wonderful. It may be a little too centred around university and academia at times, but the controlled rhythmic prose is Munro-esque, as is Lee's insight into relationships. 
