Edition 66
The Light Ascending –
The Novella Project VII
- Published 5th November, 2019
- ISBN: 9781925773804
- Extent: 264pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook
Griffith Review presents its annual showcase of the country’s leading writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The Light Ascending features new work from Holly Ringland, Julienne van Loon, Mirandi Riwoe, Allanah Hunt, Krissy Kneen and Pat Hoffie, as well as inspiring new work from Australia’s leading poets.
The residents of a seaside town find their dreams perturbed after a young woman serves them candies at the local market; an Aboriginal family is forced to deal with the consequences of the death of a loved one in custody; the model for a celebrated canvas by Paul Gauguin reveals the harsh undertone of exploitation behind the artist’s work; a woman experiencing a post-accident coma ebbs back and forth through the currents of her life.
Edited by Ashley Hay, Griffith Review 66: The Light Ascending – The Novella Project VII presents new work that challenges, celebrates, questions and critiques.
Griffith Review 66: The Light Ascending – The Novella Project VII is published with the support of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund and Australia Council for the Arts.
AUDIO
Listen to Editor Ashley Hay read ‘In the small hours: Stories from madrugada’.
Listen to Editor Ashley Hay in conversation with Nick Earls, Mirandi Riwoe and Holden Sheppard to talk all things novella.
In this Edition
The market seller
For as long as she could, Emily hung back among the shelves of her shop. Being near books was one of the few things that truly comforted her. Her love of fairytales in particular, for the hope in darkness within them, had been the reason she’d started her market bookshop after Robert left her with barely anything following their divorce. Emily picked up a Victorian anthology of fairytales and poems, ran her fingertips along its edges, thinking of all the ways second chances might arrive in a life. Of how much she had to offer someone, how much love she had to give, if only she could find the courage.
Instructions for a steep decline
Whatever happens, this is. Adrienne Rich ONE IT IS PEAK hour in the City of Light. A woman cycles backwards up a steep incline. The woman might be travelling home or to work. Other commuters flash past her on the busy city cycle path. There are...
Chronicles of the Maiwar mangroves
THEN LIKE SO MANY human faculties that had been tested and failed in that new colony, the retrieval of accurate collective memory had been tried and found sorely wanting. Nevertheless, any tattered scraps of recollection salvaged about the day’s events coalesced around the point that...
Cleave
Arrival THEY ARRIVE AT the town just after nightfall. Stand at the town sign looking up at it: Population 2,500, clear in the moonlight. ‘It’s 2,503. Now,’ he says. They watch the tail-lights of the truck that had just dropped them, red lights blinking out of sight...
Annah the Javanese
Pol drags the chair near, steps up onto it to hammer a nail into the wall above the mantelpiece. He squats to lift a painting of a woman seated in a rocking chair. As he attaches it to the wall, Annah steps back, enraptured by the languid lines of the woman, her black hair, her cinnamon skin, which is the same shade as Annah’s own. The woman’s dress is as red as a nutmeg’s lacy mace. Her bare foot reaches from beneath its folds.
Spectrums
Elsie THERE IS LIGHTNESS and darkness. Everyone knows that. There is a name for the shade that is neither light nor dark: grey. But there are multitudes of shades in between. No one has words for lightish grey or darkish light. Even the people who...
Pursuit music
We drove for years past Super 8s & motor inns, blue neon swimming like luminol across the windscreen, cruised by phone booths & flamingo pink holiday courts with No/ Vacancy signs buzzing like the basest impulses of the id, took turnpikes destined for divorce & dereliction, the liquid mercury of polarised...
Cape York
When you arrive at the tip of the Cape, the coast opens its arms and you’re split into the rivulets left by an outgoing tide, your translucent threads untangling into a turquoise open, where a jungle inflates into gentle mountains, your sight unrolling along the coast’s milky arc, then...
The morning fog (A Golden Shovel after Kate Bush)
is sweetest at the Tropic of Capricorn, the colour of lemon chiffon cake, and just as light. It might begin with a ringing of hands, it might begin with a single step. It’s capable of taking itself to the streets. Unblighted by African tulip trees’ bleed, the palms look...
Ingredients for preservation
Wear calico dress with Blueboard shoes, Corflute wings, Mylar glasses, dangling Ethafoam earrings. Create houses for each object. Know what is inside without a reference image. Bundle up rust from your great-great-uncle’s chandelier, each bulb, the light itself. Take care with the light, it has a habit of sneaking out again. Use double layers if necessary. Never...
Orison
Three days later, we bought a Newton’s cradle. Put it on the table, and heartsick, tried to click click click our way out of it. But there are six strings missing, a great big grin, and a legendary faux fur coat. There are two types of energy: potential and kinetic. One is energetic,...
Meteorology
I can predict the future. A little. And everyone loves to talk about the weather. I find what patterns I can, stay a day or two ahead of what’s happening. Sometimes it’s hail, a rash of red light on the display screens. Flattening wind – that’s blue and...
Q&A
[What are some common sources of light?] And, can light survive exposure to extreme temperatures? These are both questions we are interested in. Our goal for this project is simply to study how our environment causes our solar cells to grow and develop. Our goal is...
Routines
About once a day I think about the wetness of Ellen’s eyes as Obama placed the Presidential Medal of Freedom around her neck. The other day on Ellen the entertainment guests were hip-hop dancers who busk on the subway. After their routine she calls...
Featured Contributors
Shastra Deo
Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne and lives in Brisbane. She is currently undertaking her PhD...
Mirandi Riwoe
Mirandi Riwoe’s novella The Fish Girl (Brio Books, 2018) won Seizure’s Viva la Novella V and was shortlisted for the...
Holly Ringland
Holly Ringland’s first novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, was published by 4th Estate in 2018. It has sold...
Julienne van Loon
Julienne van Loon is an associate professor in creative writing at RMIT University. Her books include Road Story (Allen...
