Knitting & Other Stories

Twenty-four stories were selected from 260 entries submitted to the Margaret River Short Story Writing Competition.

These are stories about men, women - and children - who stand aside from the mainstream world, and see it, as Emily Dickinson would say, 'aslant'.

In Barry Divola's winning story, Knitting, the narrator is a perceptive, no-nonsense, subversive figure who is as hard on herself as she is on the world around her. She is a 'guerilla knitter' who by the end of the story is beginning to warm to her circumstances, the people around her, and, most importantly, herself. The second prize winning story Laps, by Sally Naylor-Hampson, is focused on the ocean and adolescent sexual experience, at Belongil, seventeen years earlier. In this case between an older woman, the wife of the swimming coach, and a fifteen-year old boy, Jasper. The South West Prize winning story by Vahri McKenzie, I Shine, Not Burn, is about family and family history. The underlying issue is the extent to which knowledge of the past may be destructive to following generations.

This is a collection of tightly written, graceful stories exploring the familiar and the strange by both emerging and established writers.

 

These 24 stories continue - as fine stories always do - to speak, to unsettle, to shine long after you’ve closed the book.

- Amanda Curtin