Avoiding Mr Right

Description

Offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime, Peta leaves her coastal life and doting boyfriend James in Sydney for a 12-month stint in the 'fashion capital of Australia', Melbourne. Although Melbourne is full of straight males compared with Sydney, she's not looking; in fact, she's avoiding the Mr Right so many of her girlfriends have been seeking. Peta's holy grail will never be an IVF-created baby, but rather the title 'Minister for Cultural Product'. While focusing on her professional career, Peta doesn't allow herself to fall in love or succumb to the suited uptown males that cross her path, but she does date a much younger artist, an anthropologist, a born-again Christian, a completely-wrong-for-her muso, a naive cop and a sleazy but very hot estate agent. Once assimilating into the Melbourne culture by dressing in mostly black (she refuses to ditch her favourite watermelon coat), Peta finds comfort in the cake shops of Acland Streets and wine bars between St Kilda and the city. The highlight of her stay, though, is the experience of astral travelling after her nights out in the city's finest restaurants. Dinner in Lygon Street takes her to Venice and Florence, Johnston Street takes her to Barcelona and Madrid, dinner in the city's finest French restaurant leads her that night to Paris, Bordeaux and to her surprise, French Quebec, where there are even more men to distract her than in Melbourne.

Anita is a writer, poet, activist, social commentator and academic. She is the author of Yirra and her deadly dog, Demon, I'm not racist, but... and My Story: the diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Young People's History Prize. She is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, but grew up in Matraville, Sydney. Anita describes herself as a concrete Koori with a Westfield dreaming - a city chick whose idea of Survivor is a night in a caravan.