Verge 2020: Ritual

Description

Navigating obsessions, commemorating loved ones, cooking a meal, drinking with friends, picking at our bodies, reckoning with our choices, finding ways to connect, finding ways to exist in a world that doesn't always accommodate us. Rituals give shape to our days and punctuate our years. It's the large ones we remember the most, but it's the small ones that carve out our lives for us. This year's theme resonated with so many creative writers in all different, wonderful ways. Our contributors picked through their lives, minds and imaginations to bring creative pieces spanning various genres and forms. Some will break your heart, while others will make you laugh. Most will do both.

Rebecca Bryson is a writer, researcher and editor who is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Monash University. After having worked in the publishing industry for eight years, she threw caution to the wind and decided to delve into the creative side of the writing game. She has an interest in speculative fiction and her research is centred on the future of technology from a Marxist feminist perspective. Her creative work has been published in The Suburban Review and her short story 'Infinite Scroll' was commended by the judges of the 2019 AAWP/ASSF Emerging Writer's Prize 2019. Benjamin Jay is a writer and editor for a number of interdisciplinary journals in the Literary and Cultural Studies Graduate Research Program at Monash University, where he is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing. His research focus is on representations of homosexuality and neurodiversity in children's and young adult fiction. Giulia Mastrantoni is currently completing a PhD at Monash University. Her research investigates how to better represent sexual violence in fiction, nonfiction, and creative nonfiction. She is co-editor-in-chief of Colloquy, a committee member for the Victorian Postgraduate Criminology Conference, and a published author. Giulia's fiction in Italian has been featured on a number of literary blogs, and it has won the international prize Napoli Cultural Classic (2015), whereas Giulia's fiction in English has been featured on SWAMP (2019) and on Litinfinite (2020). Giulia presented her work at Falling Walls Lab (Melbourne 2019) and at NeMLA (Boston 2020).