Carmel Bird

De flesta svenskar, också de hyggligt belästa, får lätt något panikslaget i blicken om de ombeds nämna en enda australiensisk författare, skriver Jan Arnald i förordet till Australien berättar som är en antologi med ett brett urval av samtidsförfattare från denna ofta förbisedda kontinent. Den aboriginska urbefolkningen har den längsta obrutna kulturhistorien av jordklotets alla folkslag, men ur ett västerländskt perspektiv är den australiensiska litteraturen i stort sätt nyfödd. I denna antologi finns såväl aboriginska som icke-aboriginska författare representerade. På olika sätt förhåller de sig till det australiska; dess samhälle såväl som dess säregna mytologi. Inte minst bearbetar flera av författarna på olika sätt sin egen historia. Först i februari 2008 bad den australiensiska staten officiellt om ursäkt för sin förtryckarpolitik gentemot aboriginerna. Australien berättar fyller en lucka i den bokliga allmänbildningen i Sverige, genom att ge läsare möjligheten att bekanta sig med noveller som sträcker sig från det komiska till det tragiska, från det underhållande till det reflekterande mer sällan än inte på en och samma gång. Australien berättar utkommer i Tranans uppskattade berättarserie, som presenterar framstående novellistik från hela världen, inte sällan av författare som aldrig tidigare kommit ut på svenska. Hittills har tretton volymer utkommit, senast med noveller från Lettland och Egypten.

'You clamber up, heading for the exit, the circle of faint light, as the radiance of the pre-dawn leads you on toward freedom. I follow. You spread your darling wings. You enter the net that awaits you.'Bold, tender, and often fantastical, Love Letter to Lola enters the very pain of loss and grief while preserving a wise, sly, humorous, and ironic point of view. The thylacine, the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the blue macaw are all candidates to return from extinction, and here each is given its own moving narrative. The meaning of the British monarchy is challenged by a green spider; a unicorn and the rainbow serpent contemplate the end of the world; an angel gives his perspective on human life and love with a thoughtful and exquisite mischief. The author's own 'Reflection' on the inspiration and the construction of the stories is a swift and penetrating conversation on how writing happens. Carmel Bird won the Patrick White Award for Literature in 2016. She has published novels, short stories, and non-fiction, her 2022 memoir Telltale foregrounding her Tasmanian origins, as well as her lifelong interest in the natural world, and in reading and writing. The Stolen Children - Their Stories, which she published in 1998, is an early landmark work in the promotion of indigenous issues. Love Letter to Lola is the latest offering of an author who is known for the sharpness and originality of her narratives.

In prose that sparkles with wit, shocks with insight, and beguiles with the air of legend, these seven stories take the reader from post-apocalyptic Tasmania to the tragedy of surrogate pregnancy in the 1950s. Loss of species, the whims of publishers, the question of Islam in regional Australia - these are among the subjects Carmel Bird addresses in her characteristic probing style. 'Carmel Bird's stories are dark, intriguing and yet always delightful.' Andy Griffiths 'As you'd expect, Bird's beautiful stories soar, though never into a realm you could anticipate. ' Debra Adelaide 'Bird is the best living short story writer in the country.'Matthew Condon CARMEL BIRD is the 2016 winner of the Patrick White Literary Award. Carmel's work spans forty years, and she has published thirty-eight books. Her most recent collection, published in 2015, is My Hearts Are Your Hearts, and the most recent of her eleven novels is Field of Poppies, published in 2019.

From inside her Toorak mansion, Margaret, matriarch, widow of Edmund Rice O'Day of O'Day Funerals, secretly surveys her family in the garden. Everyone, including Margaret herself, is oblivious to the secrets that threaten to be uncovered by a visiting American relative who is determined to excavate the O'Day's family history. How far will Margaret go in order to bury the truth? Family Skeleton examines the dark heart of a family that has for generations been engaged in dark business. You can't dig a grave without disturbing the smooth surface of the ground. Deftly woven with elegant wit and with compassion, this dark comedy is about what you might unearth if you dig deep enough. Carmel Bird is an established Australian author of over 20 books. She has been three-times shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Subject: Fiction]

What are the hares getting up to among the sunflowers? Who is paying $6000 for a raincoat? The priest is good, kind, adored, believed - but can the schoolgirl trust him? Who kills his wife and dumps the body in the pool? What if you find your death was listed long ago online? With lightness in the telling, with subtle harmonies and rhythms in the sentences, subversive wit, tender observation - these new stories from one of Australia's foremost storytellers explore the mysterious workings of the heart. Accompanied by the author's comments on the stories' origins and themes, as well as insights into the creative process, this is the first in Spineless Wonders' new series, FICTION PLUS. A must for lovers of short fiction - for readers and for writers.

"This book about writing and the imagination is essential reading for any writer, emerging or experienced. Re-released with new material and updated advice for the 21st century writer. 'I first read Dear Writer as a nervy, secretive scribbler-in-journals 20 years ago. Reading this revised version I'm struck again by its practical generosity on technical matters - but am also inspired by the deeper, more complex conversations I think I missed in those early readings: about courage, about the urgency and mystery and self-discovery of the writing process. Dear Writer Revisited may masquerade - convincingly - as a book for beginners, but its lessons are mature and wise.' --Charlotte Wood, The Writer's Room Interviews"

Ever wanted to write your own life story but didn't know where to start. Full of down to earth advice, inspirational references and suggestions and practical exercises.

The world of Australian writer Carmel Bird is one in which no hard line is drawn between everyday reality and unvarnished fantasy. Her new novel, The Bluebird Café, is a delectable concoction. In the brew are an Historic Museum Village (a Tasmanian Disneyland under an enormous glass dome), a verdant horizontal forest, the mysterious disappearance of midget child Lovelygod, anorexic teenager and later famous writer Virginia O’Day who pens letters to long-deceased Charles Dickens, a Japanese student’s research paper, recipes for Heavenly Tart and Cherry Ripe Slices, information about aborigines and thylacenes. Ms. Bird describes her books as being in some sense a meditation on extinction––of races of people, species of animals and plants, language meanings, the human spirit. Equally it is a celebration of the hope that continues to burn in human hearts, of delight and wonder that still abound.

The world of Australian writer Carmel Bird is one in which no hard line is drawn between everyday reality and unvarnished fantasy. Her new novel, The Bluebird Café, is a delectable concoction. In the brew are an Historic Museum Village (a Tasmanian Disneyland under an enormous glass dome), a verdant horizontal forest, the mysterious disappearance of midget child Lovelygod, anorexic teenager and later famous writer Virginia O’Day who pens letters to long-deceased Charles Dickens, a Japanese student’s research paper, recipes for Heavenly Tart and Cherry Ripe Slices, information about aborigines and thylacenes. Ms. Bird describes her books as being in some sense a meditation on extinction––of races of people, species of animals and plants, language meanings, the human spirit. Equally it is a celebration of the hope that continues to burn in human hearts, of delight and wonder that still abound.

With this collection of twenty-four stories, New Directions introduces to American readers a wonderful new writing voice from Australia. Carmel Bird deftly walks the thin line between the ordinary world and the world of the imagination and the fantastic. As she has remarked: "When I read fiction I want the words to take my spirits into the places beneath the surface of the everyday world. I want the freshness of dreams to again be revealed to me." By turns Carmel Bird's tales are funny-sad, frightening-gentle, mysterious-matter of fact. Her prose is deceptive; lucid and seemingly artless, yet surprising--a left hook from a white kid glove. "Woodpecker Point," the center-piece of this collection, perhaps best evinces Carmel Bird's many special qualities in concert, above all her unique feeling for the materiality and color of things and for the mystery of the everyday. The assembled stories have been chosen from her first book, Birth, Death and Marriages (privately printed in Australia in 1983) on through her most recent work which shows in the concluding pieces, "Goczka" and "Every Home Should Have a Cedar Chest," a poetic dimension intimated in her earlier writing and now brought to full bloom.