Margaret Hickey

Margaret Hickey
Margaret Hickey
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria.

Hickey’s work has been shortlisted and won prizes in many awards, including the AAWP/ASSF Short Story Award and the Grace Marion Award. Margaret holds a PhD in Creative writing and teaches English at La Trobe University.

Margaret’s short story collection, Rural Dreams, was published by MidnightSun in October 2020.

Rural Dreams

Rural Dreams cover
Rural Dreams cover
by Margaret Hickey

PB 224 | 198 x 128 | ISBN: 9781925227680 | $27.99
Short story collection | Also available as ebook
MidnightSun Publishing | October 2020
Distributed by NewSouth Books

Margaret Hickey’s Rural Dreams takes a look at life outside the big smoke, introducing us to the kind of characters you might expect in the country, as well as some you might not.

Funny, heartbreaking and true; the characters in Rural Dreams are the people we know and grew up with. Some of them might even be us. Continue reading Rural Dreams

Marian Matta

Marian Matta
Marian Matta
For decades Marian Matta wrote whatever was called for, from medical articles and historical research to film scripts, but she began concentrating on the short story format in 2006 after being inspired by Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain.

Her stories have subsequently appeared in several anthologies, but Life, Bound is her first solo collection. A grandmother, history tragic, internet junkie and circus student, she lives in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges with her husband, and is pleased to call Heath Ledger her muse. Optimism is her watchword.

Marian’s collection of short stories, Life, Bound, was published by MidnightSun in October 2020.

Life, Bound

Life, Bound cover
Life, Bound cover
by Marian Matta

PB 224 | 198 x 128 | ISBN: 9781925227710 | $27.99
Short story collection | Also available as ebook
MidnightSun Publishing | October 2020
Distributed by NewSouth Books

Marian Matta’s Life, Bound moves through time and place, following characters who struggle to escape the past and strive to shape the future.

Free agents or captives of our past? In Life, Bound, characters find themselves caught in situations not of their own making, or trapped by ingrained habits, walking in grooves carved out by past events.

An artist’s progress is pleasingly channelled Continue reading Life, Bound

Hannah Sommerville

Hannah Sommerville
Hannah Sommerville
Hannah Sommerville is an award-winning picture book illustrator from the South Coast of NSW. With over a decade of experience in illustration, Hannah has now illustrated more than a dozen picture books.
In 2022 her book Jetty Jumping, written by Andrea Rowe, published by Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing, was awarded the CBCA Book of the Year — Early Childhood. Her illustrations, which include watercolour, gouache, coloured pencil and digital mediums, are inspired by the playfulness and tenderness of family life and are drawn from her own memories of childhood and experiences as a mother.

Mike Dumbleton

Mike Dumbleton
Mike Dumbleton
Mike Dumbleton is an award-winning picture book writer with 10 ‘Notable Books’ selected by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. His book, Muddled-up Farm, was the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year, 2004, and Cat was a CBCA Honour Book, 2008.

Additionally, Anisa’s Alphabet gained international recognition as a White Ravens reading recommendation (2021 Munich). Mike has also received a Federal Minister’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Improving Literacy for his work as an educator and a writer over an extended period of time.

In his spare time, Mike enjoys reading, travelling, trying to keep fit, listening to jazz and watching sport.

Anisa’s Alphabet

Anisa's Alphabet cover
Anisa’s Alphabet cover
Written by Mike Dumbleton, illustrated by Hannah Sommerville

HB 32 | 280 x 240
ISBN: 9781922858269 | $17.99
Picture book | March 2020
MidnightSun Publishing
Distributed by NewSouth Books

For many refugees the alphabet represents the start of a new language and a new future, but Anisa’s Alphabet is different.

A poignant and highly imaginative telling of one girl’s story which will appeal to children and adults alike … Come with Anisa, and see things through her eyes. Continue reading Anisa’s Alphabet

Dominic Carew

Dominic Carew
Dominic Carew
Dominic Carew is a lawyer and writer from Sydney. He has practised law in Sydney, London, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands in leading global law firms and financial institutions. He has an MA in Creative Writing from UTS, for which he received an Outstanding Student Award. Dominic has won or been shortlisted for many major short story awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

No Neat Endings is Dominic’s first collection of stories.

No Neat Endings

No Neat Endings cover
No Neat Endings cover
by Dominic Carew

PB 224 | 198 x 128 | ISBN: 9781925227611 | $27.99
Short story collection | Also available as ebook
MidnightSun Publishing | February 2020
Distributed by NewSouth Books

A young man can’t make love. A pedantic father spots a blemish in his new shorts and returns to the shop to demand their exchange. A girl rocks up to a Tinder date wearing a helmet.

In nineteen short stories, No Neat Endings pits its characters against the challenges of modern life, sex, love, work and the world. Continue reading No Neat Endings

What is Cryptozoology?

Nean McKenzie, author of Cryptosight, shares some of her experiences of the publication of her first book, an adventure story for 8-14 year-olds.

Cryptosight cover
Cryptosight cover

Staring into thick bush, full of shadows and tangled plants, I’m always aware there COULD be something in there that I don’t know about. It’s probably something I’ve heard of before. But what if it’s something hidden, something unknown? And once I started thinking about this, Cryptosight began. Cryptozoology is a little zone between fantasy and reality. I have spoken to two quite normal people since Cryptosight has been published, who both claim to have seen a ‘black cat’ (the puma that is frequently sighted but never confirmed, all over Victoria). I find this quite fascinating.  How do so many people see these things? Do they exist? And if they don’t, why do people think they do?

When I was growing up Continue reading What is Cryptozoology?

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