Welcome to our new page where we will endeavour to bring you latest releases from our authors on a regular basis. If you are interested in any of our member publications you can purchase them directly from the author whose details will appear with their publication shortly.
ISBN: 9780648161127
Author: Carolyn Eldridge-Alfonzetti
Illustrator: Heather Charlton
Ages: 3+
The forest is dark now. Each bug, bird and beast that slept in the day wakes up ready to feast! Can you find all the nocturnal rainforest creatures in this beautifully illustrated Australian wildlife book?
Available through bookstores or Wild Eyed Press (http://www.wildeyedpress.com.au)
ISBN: 978-1-925572-15-5
Author: Carolyn Eldridge-Alfonzetti
Illustrator: Teresa Lawrence
Ages: 8+
Around the Globe with Gramps is a verse novella containing several original recipes. It is about love and the things we’re prepared to do for those we care about most. It’s also about growing up and growing old and gives glimpses into different cultural traditions around the world.
Lucy is about to start high school. She has a cool new friend, Briony, and feels she’s outgrown the school holiday ‘Overseas Adventures Days’ she shares with her grandfather, a retired Geography teacher. When Lucy asks to spend those days with Briony, instead of doing geography research and international craft and cookery with Gramps, her mother refuses and reveals a poignant reason. Lucy tries and fails to interest Gramps in another shared activity, and she and her mother clash. However, when an emergency threatens more than just her Fridays with Gramps, Lucy reflects on all they’ve shared, and by the story’s end has matured enough to risk embarrassment to give back to Gramps some of the joy their days together have given her.
Available through bookstores or Celepane Press (https://www.celapenepress.com.au)
Saffron and Silk is Anne Benjamin’s beautifully written novel about life as a young Australian Indian bride during the time of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi. Anne uses her personal experience to explore the larger issues of India’s culture and history, making Saffron and Silk a personal insider story of some of the treasures and dilemmas of a country that is increasingly significant to contemporary Australia
A Cobbled Path is Erina Booker’s eighth collection of poems. Erina has focused her finely-tuned artist’s eye on everything from the mercurial nature of love, to the existential questions of loss, loneliness, and grief, and the many things in between
Gemstones
by Anne Benjamin and Friends
Skylark Publishing, pb, 67pp, 9781530574889
Gemstones is all about relationship. In her introduction to this anthology of responsive tanka, poet Anne Benjamin speaks of her friendships with, and admiration for, her seven co-writers (Jan Foster AUS, Claire Everett UK, Patricia Prime NZ, Marilyn Humbert AUS, Luminita Suse CAN, Julie Thorndyke AUS, Carmel Summers AUS) and the Biographical Notes highlight each writer’s impressive individual accomplishment.
The Foreword by David Terelinck briefly alludes to the history of the form, explains the key requirement of responsive poetry as ‘the ability to have individual, yet complementary voices’, and whets the reader’s appetite for the poems encompassing an expansive scope of moods, settings, and themes including love, loss, joy, and social justice that follow.
The beauty of a polished stone is either intensified or diminished by its setting. Happily, the experience of reading each of the small gems in this anthology is enhanced by its relationship with its company in the chain. The skilful links and the shifts in direction of each sequence are satisfyingly free of fictional contrivances or jarring leaps and these poems ring with authenticity.
Carolyn Eldridge-Alfonzetti
Writing Fellow – NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers
Eastwood/Hills FAW 