#lockdownreads
Recent Member Releases
The isolated Australian harbour town of Gulpepper is not like other places. Some maps don't even show it. And only outsiders use the full name. Everyone who lives there calls it The Gulp. The place has a habit of swallowing people.
Alan Baxter is a multi-award-winning author of horror, supernatural thrillers, and dark fantasy liberally mixed with crime, mystery, and noir. He creates dark, weird stories among dairy paddocks on the beautiful south coast of NSW, Australia.
When Gough Whitlam moves into her street in Cabramatta in 1957, eight-year-old Christine has little idea how her new neighbour, one of the most visionary and polarising political leaders of Australia, would shape the direction of her life.
Christine Sykes served as a Senior Public Servant for 30 years. She published her first book, The Changing Room (Ventura Press) in 2019, inspired by her work with the women’s charity Dress for Success.
Roots brings us thirty of the best short memoirs from more than 2000 entries in the inaugural SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition, including one by Jackie Bailey.
Offering a snapshot of contemporary Australia, this diverse collection of stories explores love, family, loss, culture, sexual awakening and the abiding connections to people and place that make us who we are.
Jackie Bailey is the founder and Principal of BYP Group with 18 years experience in the Australian government and non-profit sectors.
Dear Ibis is a tender yet unflinching meditation on what it means to feel at home, and what it means to have this taken away. Set in New South Wales’ lush South Coast against the backdrop of the 2019-20 bushfires come stories of birth and death, disability and resilience, colonial greed and moral reckonings.
Kate Liston-Mills is an Australian author, tutor and mother. Inspired by her home town, Pambula, on Yuin land on the far south coast of New South Wales, Kate writes about the people living there and their experiences of tragedy and triumph in everyday life.
Book Reviews
South Coast Writers Centre reviews are written by the 2021 SCWC Book Reviewer Andy Muir.
Sydney Review of Books publishes critical, creative, ambitious, and engaging writing on contemporary literature and culture. We’ve selected four of their critical reviews for your reading.
Click on the book covers below to read their reviews.
SCWC Reviews
Sydney Review of Books
Interviews on Words and Nerds Podcast
Words and Nerds Podcast began in 2017 and has since celebrated hundreds of episodes, takeovers and spin-offs. The podcast has a huge following and continues to grow. In 2021, Words and Nerds Podcast featured several SCWC members as part of Sutherland Writers Festival.
Click on the images below to be taken to their interviews with Words and Nerds host Dani Vee.
Aunty Barbara Nicholson
Christine Sykes
Alan Baxter
Member Podcasts
Baby Teeth Literary Journal
Baby Teeth Journal is an online indie publisher and small press with a focus on local queer and emerging creators. Their editor-in-chief is Lore White, who worked with us on the Olga Masters Short Story Award and the Legacies Anthology Project, and the Baby Teeth team is based on Dharawal land in Wollongong NSW.
The journal publishes content monthly, which is free to view online, and they also sell e-zines. Check out some of the poetry and art they’ve published recently by clicking the images below!
Books by Mail from Society City
Society City is our local not-for-profit second-hand bookshop (and arts venue, and co-working space, and volunteer collective!) and during lockdown, they’re selling #booksbymail. Several times a week, their volunteers are posting curated selections of books for sale and posting them on their Instagram to be sold to the first to claim it!
If you’d like to buy some unexpected and unique books to keep your bookshelf fully stocked, check out their Instagram page @societycitywollongong and have them posted directly to you.
