Colonial Cringe

Robbie Arnott’s acclaimed debut, Flames (2018), won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award and a Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, a Queensland Literary Award, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Not the Booker Prize. His follow-up, The Rain Heron (2020), won the Age Book of the Year award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the ALS Gold Medal, the Voss Literary Prize and an Adelaide Festival Award. His latest novel is Limberlost. He lives in Hobart. 

Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin Noongar woman whose ancestral country is on the south coast of Western Australia. Born in Perth she has spent most of her life in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. She has written 3 novels Terra Nullius (2019), The Old Lie (2019), and Enclave and a non-fiction book Lies Damned Lies: A personal exploration of the the impact of colonisation (2021). Her art criticism has been published in Spectrum, Artlink and Art Collector and in exhibition catalogues for NGV, AGSA and NGA and others. Her conceptual/video work Refugium won the Incinerator Art Award in 2021 and she will feature in a number of exhibitions in 2022. She writes novels, poetry, short-fiction, drama and essay and has featured in the Saturday Paper, the Guardian, Meanjin, Australian Poetry and many others. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in multiple anthologies.

Fiona McFarlane is the author of the novel The Night Guest, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, and the collection of short stories The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second novel, The Sun Walks Down, is set in the Flinders Ranges. Fiona teaches fiction at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Janaka Malwatta was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in London, and now spends his time between Sri Lanka and Brisbane. He won the 2021 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for blackbirds don’t mate with starlings, which was published by University of Queensland Press in 2022. He has appeared at Brisbane Writers Festival, the OzAsia Festival and at Queensland Poetry Festvial. He has been published in various magazines, including Cordite Poetry Review, Rabbit Poetry Journal and Peril Magazine.

Fiona Stager co-owns Avid Reader and Where the Wild Things Are, two award winning independent bookshops located in the heart of West End.