Spineless Wonders launches new short fiction series

Independent Australian publisher Spineless Wonders has announced plans for a new series that combines short stories with authors’ reflections on them.

Publisher Bronwyn Mehan told Books+Publishing that the ‘SW Fiction Plus’ series ‘has come about in response to the interest we’ve had in our anthology of stories and essays Cracking the Spine: Ten Short Australian Stories and How They Were Written’, and ‘will be of great interest, we think, to readers and to writers’ and ‘a great resource for teachers and students of creative writing and Australian literature’.

The first collection in the series will be My Hearts Are Your Hearts by Carmel Bird (August) and ‘will contain text and context—nineteen stories and a long essay on how each of them came about, reflections on the themes in the collection and on the processes of writing and creativity,’ said Mehan. A collection by Alice Springs author Michael Giacometti is planned for late 2015/early 2016.  

Mehan said she plans to be ‘very selective’ about which authors are chosen for the series as ‘only some authors can pull this kind of thing off’; that is, ‘to add value to their collection in a way that avoids interpreting the stories for the reader’. 

Mehan said that Spineless Wonders is ‘interested in writers who are working at experimental end of the short form’ and those ‘who have spent time in a university environment reflecting on their writing and its influences’. 

Spineless Wonders recently launched a new series of events featuring live readings of short fiction by professional actors in Sydney.