Laurie Steed
Laurie Steed is an award-winning author from Perth, Western Australia. His fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, The Age, Meanjin, Westerly, Island, and elsewhere. His début novel, You Belong Here, was published in 2018 and shortlisted for the 2018 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. His memoir, Love, Dad: Confessions of an anxious father was released in August 2023 and his third book, Greater City Shadows, won the 2021 Henry Handel Richardson Flagship Fellowship for Short Story Writing, was shortlisted for the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and will be published by UWA Publishing in 2024.
Smithy is a retired shearer turned vineyard worker. His days are spent among the vines, where minutiae become conversational talking points and the lives of others are dissected with dogged patience. Smithy, a recovering alcoholic, still haunts the bars he used to call home, but no longer drinks in them. As a consequence, memories are resurfacing: a past up north, his wife Florrie, and days when h ... (read more)
It takes a talented writer to imbue history with colour and vivacity. It is all the more impressive when the author creates a compelling narrative. As an example of a burgeoning genre, A Few Right Thinking Men more than matches its historical crime contemporaries in both areas.
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At its best, popular fiction is almost cinematic. As readers, we know what to expect but still gasp in awe as the rug is pulled from under us in pursuit of thrills, chills, and narrative twists. Honey Brown’s second novel, The Good Daughter, is a fine example of the modern ethos. It reads like a classic girl-gone-bad screenplay. Rebecca Toyer, from the wrong side of the tracks, meets Zach Kinc ... (read more)
Liam Pieper has been making quite a name for himself in recent years. He published his début memoir, The Feel Good Hit of the Year, to acclaim in 2014. He followed this up with Mistakes Were Made (2015), a collection of four essays. Now, just over a year later, he has published his first novel, The Toymaker; one reviewer has even compared it favourably to J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999).
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Our national literary landscape would be seriously depleted without The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award. It jump-started the careers of Tim Winton, Julienne van Loon, and Andrew McGahan, authors who have been willing to explore the harsher aspects of Australia’s identity, however confronting these journeys may sometimes have been. Others, such as Gillian Mears, Danielle Wood, and Eva Sallis ... (read more)
Australia’s history is chequered at best. For every story of military heroism, there is one of discomfiting prejudice. So it is with Christine Piper’s After Darkness, which explores Australian history from the point of view of a Japanese doctor, Tomakazu Ibaraki, arrested as a national threat while in Broome, and sent to the Loveday internment camps in regional South Australia.
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Known in certain quarters as ‘the godfather of Australian crime fiction’, Peter Corris is certainly persistent. Prior to this, he has written thirty-seven novels involving the wily, irrepressible Cliff Hardy. The Dunbar Case showcases an older but still sprightly Hardy, who deals with maritime mysteries, amorous women, and a notorious crime family.
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How to review a book that includes, as major characters, Simpson and his donkey, the Dig Tree, and a bus that may or may not be a tram? In the case of Wayne MacAuley’s Other Stories,it is best to read story by story, pausing only to chart connecting themes in the cultural landscape.
MacAuley’s short fiction draws inspiration from a surprisingly broad range of influences. Adam Lindsay Gordon, ... (read more)
One feels greatly conflicted while reading The Ottoman Motel. While Christopher Currie’s début novel certainly shows promise, it would have benefited from further editorial development prior to publication.
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