Flock: First Nations Stories Then and Now

Description

Curated and introduced by award-winning author Ellen van Neerven, Flock features luminous storytelling from leading Aboriginal writers, such as Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko and Tara June Winch, as well as some of the brightest new stars. This wide-ranging and captivating anthology showcases both the power of First Nations writing and the satisfaction of a good short story. Curated by award-winning author Ellen van Neerven, Flock roams the landscape of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytelling, bringing together voices from across the generations. Featuring established authors such as Tony Birch and Melissa Lucashenko, and rising stars such as Adam Thompson and Mykaela Saunders, Flock confirms the ongoing resonance and originality of First Nations stories.

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. Ellen's first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Ellen has published two poetry collections- Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize and highly commended for the 2016 Wesley Michel Wright Prize; and most recently Throat, which was the recipient of the UQP Quentin Bryce Award.

'Flock is a library of First Nations writing inside a single book. It's not so much about what you go looking for - van Neerven's done that work already - but what eloquent things you stumble upon. This way, or that, the collection traces the lineaments of First nations short story writing, in content and form.' --The Saturday Paper 'Flock is broad in scope and touches on all manner of life's beauty and messiness. Ultimately, it's the quality of the writing that impresses as much as the themes explored.' --Books + Publishing 'First Nations were subjected to what the African political theorist Achille Mbeube calls necropolitics: both the prospect of literal murder and the assumption that as a people we would either die out or be forcibly assimilated. Flock is a fiction collection whose existence highlights the failure of those fictions which, however briefly, once threatened its telling.' --Sydney Morning Herald