Bookshop capers
From a faded couch
Melt-down
Those who come across the seas
'Undertow' (Gina Mercer, Hobart 2012)
'Dancing with Empty Prams' (Sally Lingard, Brisbane 2023)
'Dancing with Empty Prams' (Esther Ottaway, Hobart 2023)
An interview with Melanie Barnes
Keep a flame of hope alive — Susan Austin, interview & poem
Susan Austin – on Esther Ottaway's poem Sonnet for fifteen
Susan Austin is a poet, mental health occupational therapist and eco-socialist activist. She facilitates group programs,
including a creative writing program, in a mental health clinic in Hobart. She grew up in Qld and now lives in Hobart with her husband and
two children.
Her first poetry manuscript “An Undertow of Resilience” was awarded First Commended in the Best First Book category of the IP Picks 2011
competition and has been published, with the name “Undertow”, by Walleah Press in September 2012.
In 2020 she was awarded a Career Development Grant by The Australia Council for the Arts, the arts funding and advisory body
of The Australian Government, to work on her second book, a verse novel centering on a theme of infertility, with mentor and
Editor Dr Gina Mercer. This book, Dancing with Empty Prams, was published by Walleah Press in 2023. Susan has recently
completed a third collection of poems.