Books Launched

by | Oct 16, 2018 | Conferences, Gold Coast 2018

Coitus Interruptus and Other Stories

Coitus Interruptus and Other Stories

Malachi Edwin Vethamani

Launch: Wed Dec 5th, 3:30 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone

Maya Press - Available through Gerakbudaya Petaling Jaya
2018

Life, love, loneliness and death are the four poles that limn this collection of memorable stories. The characters are varied—women torn between marriage and emancipated lives of their own, a young boy whose taste or memory is shaped by May 13, mixed-race couples split by the walls of race and religion, men whose love cannot be understood by their family or nation, sassy stories showcasing the clash between superstition and modernity. Cool, clever and controversial, these stories show the shadow and light of contemporary Malaysia through the small, daily lives of its unforgettable characters.

In these stories, Malachi Edwin Vethamani bravely explores the intersections and conflicts between family and sexuality that are typical in contemporary Asian societies, yet also universal. Few Malaysian writers have dared to approach sexuality and sexual diversity with such candour and courage. Vethamani's characters are endearingly familiar, but the quandaries and moral dilemmas they face remain unusual in Malaysian English fiction.

- Preeta Samarasan, author, Evening is A Whole Day

Malachi Edwin Vethamani vividly presents characters with longings that remain unfulfilled, many a times unaware of their deepest desires. Whether it is Sunita’s blunderous ‘Coitus Interruptus’ or Balan’s withdrawal from a dishonest relationship in ‘Best Man’s Kiss’, the search never ends. Incidents do not change them the way they would in stories with a more classic design. The longing continues. Like life, there are no easy resolutions.

Vethamani’s stories compel the reader to reflect on the future of his characters. You hope they find what they are looking for. Or you hope they ultimately know what they are looking for. Either way, they are memorable and remain with you long after you have put aside these beautiful nuggets. Peopled with characters of Tamil origin, these slices of life in Malaysia are more palpable after this fine read.

- Mahesh Dattani, Playwright and Director

The stories are spiky, sexy and seductive. They are rich and redolent with Malaysian culture, insightful, witty and bang up to date.

- John McRae, University of Nottingham, UK.

Many Uses of Mint

Many Uses of Mint

Ravi Shankar

Launch: Thu Dec 6th, 3:30 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone

2018
Here is poetry that seeks whiteness without denying its love of the polychromatic.” So Ravi Shankar’s poetry starts with the Rig Veda, and moves away from Sanskrit to the most modern voices: from English to French to American, Ravi Shankar knows how to play his chosen instrument, poetry, better than anyone, and he allows the instrument to play its soloist too.  
— John Tranter. author of Urban Myths, Starlight, and Heart Starter.
 
 The role of clocks, the magic of Prince, the art of Chagall, sex, science, the language of nature and the nature of language, India, America, politics, and love – there seemingly is nothing beyond the ken or pen of this polymath poet. Ravi Shankar’s poetry is thoughtful and quotable, dense with allusion and metaphor and yet airy and light of foot. It’s a rare combination of the erudite and the approachable. “Before the invention/Of the pump, there was one less way to understand the human heart.” Playful, erotic, witty and wise. 
— Linda Jaivin, author of "The Empress Lover"
 
Ravi Shankar writes a poetry of restrained ecstasy. Language plays in his poems like children’s voices after dark. Shankar is a master of forms drawn from the many poetries he inhabits. To read him is sometimes to take a dance class, sometimes to hear a plain confession (and realise it’s your own); always it is to be steeped deeper in the dangerous and delightful, ruthless and sacred nature of things. These poems, new and old, find idioms, forms and rhythms that order, a while, the chaos that stalks and calls us all: “The dark/ realization that I don’t belong to myself.” Here, in these new and selected poems, is all the rest of what we belong to: the frantic, shapely world of thought and thing and almost fathomless feeling. Like Wallace Stevens, Shankar manages both to mean and unsettle meaning in every other—now plain, now purple, now frank, now playful—line.
—Mark Tredinick 
The Soapbox

The Soapbox

Phillip Edmonds

Launch: Thu Dec 6th, 3:30 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone

Arcadia
2018

These stories range across Australia today. Warwick in The Soapbox tries to make sense of Australia’s cultural cringe. In Magpies the well-meaning Jeff resists intimacy, and The Town Halfway Across Australiasees Julius traverse the continent, only to find that as a white man, he is a stranger. Foxes introduces us to an ex-Nazi, seeking to escape from his past. In The Green Valiant we are reminded of the Vietnam War. These passionate, artful and emotionally candid stories show a country caught in its own trauma.

Innocent Abroad

Innocent Abroad

Philip McLaren

Launch: Fri Dec 7th, 3:45 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone
2018

INNOCENT ABROAD contrasts traditional Australian desert life with the cultured high end of art society in Paris. It's a story about art fraud, lust, love and murder.

Emerging Aboriginal artist Tommy Mullabah from a small desert community in Australia is encouraged to go to Paris to step onto the world stage. He doesn’t speak French and has never been to a big city. He has a lustfilled liaison with Martine, a wealthy art patron who introduces him to the Paris art world. Then he meets Erica, a TIME magazine art critic who comes to Paris to interview him. He falls in love with Erica and we have a classic triangle amoureux. Forgeries of Tommy’s paintings begin to flood the auction houses at the same time as his patron, Martine, is brutally murdered. Tommy learns that he is the prime suspect and he runs.

The Earth Does Not Get Fat

The Earth Does Not Get Fat

Julia Prendergast

Launch: Wed Dec 5th, 3:30 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone

2018

A tale of dark family secrets, yet also a tale imbued with awe and wonder at life’s mysteries. Prendergast vests her traumatised characters with dignity, and writes them with deep affection and understanding. Poetic, yet earthed, driven by a raw intensity, this impressive debut novel burns with love. - Arnold Zable
A lyrical portrait of love among the ruins. - Amanda Lohrey Julia Prendergast is a real writer who writes about real life. There was a time when real life was to be sneered at, undeserving of an artist’s attention. Fortunately life keeps insisting on our regard and Prendergast gives it that. She will be in the top echelon of Australian writers. - Bruce Pascoe
Julia Prendergast handles her themes - love and loss, independence and responsibility, fact and fantasy - with considerable skill. The darkness of her subject-matter is offset by the vigour of the language, the flashes of humour and the unmistakable compassion that underpins the narrative as a whole. An impressive debut. - Jem Poster
She looked like someone who has had a hard life and no money to take care of herself, like a broken woman at the end of the world, dead on her feet, skin slapped over her bones like white paint, old white paint, slightly yellow. Her shoulders and collarbones were sticking out of her skin like … like nothing. There is nothing I know that is as awful as her bones poking out of her dirty yellow chicken-skin. Chelsea doesn’t attend school much any more. She is carer for her mother who is sinking further into depression after a trauma, and her Grandad who has slipped into full-blown dementia. Her father is long gone; others are shadowy memories – intangible like dreams. Barely known ghosts make for strange company. Then a parcel arrives, and in it are questions—about her mother and her past self, their shared histories, and the people and place from which they’ve run. The Earth Does Not Get Fat is a powerful and gut-wrenching debut about intense suffering and love—fierce, searing love.
Green Dance - Tamborine Mountain Poems

Green Dance - Tamborine Mountain Poems

Jena Woodhouse

Launch: Thu Dec 6th, 3:30 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone

Calanthe Press
2018

This collection of twenty-four poems spans many years of contact and fascination with the natural world of Tamborine Mountain and its flora and fauna, situated on the rim of an ancient volcanic crater in the rainforest country of south-east Queensland. It is the debut publication of Calanthe Press, a new poetry publisher based on Tamborine Mountain.

Neighbour's Luck (邻人的运气)

Neighbour's Luck (邻人的运气)

Yolanda Yu

Launch: Thu Dec 6th, 3:30 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone

2018

Neighbor’s Luck is Yolanda’s first collection of short stories, written in Chinese, since she won 1st place, Golden Point Award, Chinese Short Stories in 2017. In the ten stories of various styles, a lonely man falls in love with a photo, though no sweet feelings for the owner of the photo; a young girl has a sweet sleep amidst the sound of washing blood stains by her parents, but wakes up every night at a particular timeslot to investigate; an “given-it-up-all” beauty dates with the twelfth man, upon learning that he works in a slaughterhouse, she decides to bring him in front of her mother; an old man believes in the power of fengshui, and from there the two neighbors’ fates intertwine.

The stories are often born of trivial matters, with non-mainstream people such as elderlies, locksmith, slaughterhouse worker as main characters, exploring people’s real and surreal dilemmas across life stages of childhood, courtship, marriage, reproduction, and old age, as well as their relentless pursuit of love and respect.

Sydney Noir

Sydney Noir

John Dale

Launch: Fri Dec 7th, 3:45 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone
Brio Books
2018

The Akashic ‘Noir’ crime series began in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. The book earned so much attention and acclaim that the series has now expanded internationally to include over 90 cities. Familiar and exotic locations combined with excellent ‘noir’ writing have proved a winning formula.

Sydney Noir, edited by acclaimed writer John Dale, is the first-ever Australian title in the series. The characters in these stories range from Aboriginal liaison officers and retired detectives to cab drivers and drug dealers. Some are desperate for money, revenge or fame; others are caught up in circumstances beyond their control or in a sexual relationship gone wrong.

The reader is taken from Kings Cross to La Perouse, from Balmain to Parramatta, Redfern to Maroubra, Clovelly to Bankstown, Sydney Harbour to Edgecliff, Newtown to Ashfield, and Lavender Bay to Mosman. There are no safe spaces in this collection.

Contributors: Kirsten Tranter, Mark Dapin, Leigh Redhead, John Dale, Mandy Sayer, Tom Gilling, Gabrielle Lord, Peter Doyle, Julie Koh, Peter Polites, Eleanor Limprecht, Philip McLaren, P.M. Newton and Robert Drewe.

Me, Modernism and my Indigenous Roots

Me, Modernism and my Indigenous Roots

Emmanuela Shinta

Launch: Fri Dec 7th, 3:45 - G.40 3.71 Red Zone

ME, MODERNISM & MY INDIGENOUS ROOTS is a perspective of an indigenous Dayak woman to life in the midst of environmental destruction and industrialization in her homeland, Kalimantan. This book is about connection to the ancestors, indigenous activism, journey into self discovery and finding your place in this world.