Helen Garner moves into a letterbox. Dead bats rain from the sky. A woman offers Lou Reed her last cigarette at a suburban bus stop. In fifty piercing stories set in working class Western Australia, Salt City Runaway introduces a cast of unforgettable characters who disrupt and delight.
EVENTS
Monday May 11: Ode to Sirens Fremantle for New Edition Bookshop. Tickets here.
Friday May 15: 12.30pm. Launch, Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival. Tickets here.
Saturday May 16: 9am, Flash Fiction Masterclass, Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival. Tickets here.
Saturday May 23: Online event SmokeLong Quarterly. (Details shortly)
Monday May 25: 6.30. Boundless Books, Leederville. Tickets here.
Wednesday May 27: S6pm. Success Library, Cockburn. Tickets here.
Thursday June 4: 6pm. Lane Bookshop, Claremont. Tickets here.
Thursday July 16. 6.30pm. Feminist FLash Fiction with Patricia Q. Bidar and Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, East Bristol Books, Bristol, UK. Tickets here.
Friday July 17: 9am. Workshop. Bath Flash Fiction Festival, Bristol, UK. Tickets here.
Praise for Salt City Runaway
‘A chorus of tiny stabs whose sly work is done before the wounds even register. The cumulative impact is startling.’
Tim Winton, author of Dirt Music, Juice, Cloudstreet.
‘Salt City Runaway is an exhilarating read. A collection of very short stories that are deep and true, Salt City Runaway has a rhythm that will keep you reading long after you intend to stop and imagery that will take your breath away. This is a collection with breadth and balance. I have felt punched in the gut, lifted aloft and dazzled by the uncanny. While each story stands alone, the voice is consistently strong and there is a sense of time and place that left me in no doubt these stories belong together. In this collection, Gillian O’Shaughnessy beautifully illustrates the adage that less is indeed more.‘
Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho.
‘Salt City Runaway, by Gillian O’Shaughnessy, is a masterful debut collection by one of the foremost flash and short prose writers working today. Here, we are given fifty captivating and powerful stories that are original and deep, possessing authentic emotional weight and candor. Set largely in Western Australia, these stories capture the lives of women and young girls, survivors and strivers all, navigating love and loss and loneliness in all its complexities. A writer of considerable range, O’Shaughnessy lends her own brand of delightful surrealism and humor to many of these pieces: Helen Garner take up residence in a letterbox. A girl blooms into an apple tree. Bats fall from the sky! Each and every one of these stories lands on an unforgettable image. These are stories that make their mark indelibly on the heart and the mind long after reading. Read this collection, but read it slowly. Immerse yourself in the worlds and the lives Gillian O’Shaughnessy renders so vividly for us. This a master writer at the height of her powers. What a gift she has given us.’
Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
(more to come)
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Gillian O’Shaughnessy 