Equator, a rambunctious, unwieldy novel, begins in a Spanish orphanage with an elderly watchdog, Pinski. According to the narrator, who is addressing a large orange butterfly, Pinski has succumbed to the heat of the day and cannot be bothered protecting his human charges. The human characters – and therefore, by association, those who are reading his story – are called ‘the custodians of the ... (read more)
Cheryl Jorgensen
Based in Brisbane, Cheryl Jorgensen has been surviving (just) as a freelance writer for several years.
Last December the third edition of her novel Brutal, a nonfiction set in Westbrook, was released by New Holland. Her second nonfiction, The Taint, was published in 2008 by Boolarong Press. Jorgensen also writes fiction. Morag Bane, her Young Adult novel, won the Fastbooks Award in 2004, the same year her adult crime novel, A Quality of Light, was sole runner-up to the Davitt Prize.
Jorgensen has an MPhil in Creative Writing from UQ. She is currently researching her PhD thesis in Literature.
According to the author’s note at the end of The Grand Hotel, this will probably be the last of his stories to be set in fictional Mangowak, a coastal town in south-western Victoria. The first, The Patron Saint of Eels (2005), won the 2006 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. The second, Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds (2007), was shortlisted for the 2008 New South Wales Premier’s Prize f ... (read more)
Owen Graves, by occupation a house wrecker and by nature a collector, is summoned to the world’s tallest building by the president of Chicago’s First Equitable Insurance Company. Relentless entrepreneur Hale Gray plans to underwrite insurance policies for the masses by seducing them with exotica from the South Sea Islands, as well as live savages in native huts on the roof of his skyscraper. I ... (read more)