John Hale’s ‘Ports of Call’ – poetry, fiction, memoir – was launched in Hobart on 24th July, 2014 by Kathryn Lomer.

‘John Hale looks upon the world with a benign understanding, and he writes it with love. His work is deftly wrought and nuanced – and, as Ports of Call well attests, he is versatile, crossing the literary modes with an assured ease. This is writing laced with whimsy and flecked with a tough wisdom. Here are stories that intersect in surprising ways, poems that nail ice-pure truths in the hammer of their closing lines, laugh-loud literary satires, and memorial essays that take us to the aching soul of the fraught business of living in – and leaving – families…’

PETE HAY