Books published by Ginninderra Press

Set in urban contemporary Sydney, My Year With Sammy is the complex and poetic story of a memorable child.';Parenting and grand-parenting are joumeys without a compass. In My Year with Sammy, Libby Sommer gives us a raw, heart-rending, insightful and intimate story of one family immersed in the messiness of living with a child who is different. This is recommended reading in juxtaposition with the academic and ';how-to' material that is on the market. Something beautiful breaks through from the darkness.' Colleen Keating, author of A Call to Listen';Sammy is a wild, stubborn girl who is also endearing and fascinating. This is a compelling story of the challenges and joys of parenting, but at the heart of this book is an unforgettable portrait of a determined and unusual child. I loved this intimate, funny and very moving novel.' Andy Kissane';The strength of Libby Sommer's work is its engagement with the contemporary mores and sexual manners of urban Australian life. Her writing is notable for its sensitivity, honesty and humour. She is a chronicler of our times.' Amanda LohreyMy Year With Sammy was shortlisted in Seizure's 2015 Viva Novella Competition and in the UK's 2014 Mslexia Competition.

Kathleen Miriam Bleakley was born before breakfast. She was delivered by her Grandad Dr John Martin in a room awash with Moroccan light. The first sentence she uttered was more sish singers. Her fish-like love of swimming can be traced to lighthouse keeper ancestry. When Kathleen moved to Wollongong, she navigated her way around town and university, keeping the big lighthouse in sight. Living in Sweden, Kathleen missed bright Australian skies yet embraced candle-lit days followed eventually by the midnight sun. According to the stars, she's a moon child. Kathleen loves the moon's many shades, and collaborating with 'pling, in distilling and shaping images, moments, places, memories and dreams.'pling has been working with light for over 35 years, entering the darkroom in his university days and being drawn back into it through contemporary performance photography over the last 20 years. His photography is biased toward contemporary music, theatre and other performance, but he has been known to get distracted by anything from buildings to desert. 'pling has had close artistic collaborations with numerous contemporary performance practitioners, most notably with Janine Ayres, Joe Woodward and the late David Branson. His work has been published in Muse, artlook, The Canberra Times, Lowdown, Real Time and other publications including theatre posters, programs & exhibitions including 3 Canberra Centenary exhibitions; his images have been used by the National Film and Sound Archive.

Shards of Ice is about Antarctica, the death of a beloved husband and grief. Written in fragments, Shards of Ice interweaves experiences of the author's trips to Antarctica the first was soon after her husband died and stories of the early explorers, in the form of snapshots rather than linear history. There is a section on the Red Desert, central Australia, another spiritual home of the author's, contrasting with the southern white desert. And significant reflection about the four years of her husband's decline, his death and her grief. The growing demographic of Baby Boomers will be facing dying and grief sooner than they expect. Shards of Ice provides pathways and experience, and asks questions.

';With this, her first published collection of poetry, Jill Nevile demonstrates that contemporary verse need not be oblique or obscure. She writes with an intriguing and refreshing candour on topics as diverse as her life in Britain, her flirtations with Greece and her love affair with Australia. Writing in both free and traditional verse, Jill conveys her acute observations and unerring eye for detail with great skill. Whether reminiscing on past attachments or celebrating the joy of nature and her surrounds, Jill Nevile's poetry is clear, succinct and, above all, a pleasure to read.' Vic Jefferies, award-winning poet

Being bullied for the colour of her skin is the least of fourteen-year-old Velvet Brown's problems. Velvet was born with a terrifying second sight. She ';sees' the crazies, the psychopaths, those monsters sliding among us, hidden behind normal-looking faces. There's a double murder in her small-minded town and Velvet has seen the ';monsters' the murderers. But she can't download on her best friend, Kaleen Pingelly, or even go to the police. No one will believe her. And when love spins into her life in the shape of a sixteen-year-old racing cyclist, a guy so hot he makes Lycra look cool, Velvets problems rise to yet another level. To save herself and Kaleen from danger, Velvet must find evidence enough to prove to others what only she can see.';If you love horses, and a friendship you can believe in, and a little romance, and a little mystery, and a tale that keeps you guessing as you turn the pages, youve come to the right place.' Roisin Meaney, number one best-selling Irish author ';A pacy exciting ride through a plot layered with crime, special abilities, mystery and horses.' Paddy O'Reilly, award-winning Australian author Myra King is a Pushcart nominee. She has won the UK Global and been shortlisted for the US Glass Woman Prize and the Scarlett Stiletto. For many years she wrote for Hoofs and Horns, Rider and National Rider.

This is a story about growing up in a small racist town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, during the Apartheid years. The author is the oldest son of the town's mayor, a publican. He grew up between the hotel, where he was exposed at an early age to much of the town's less salubrious goings on, and a harsh boarding school experience. Garth relishes the simple language of a story told by cronies at the bar, where he served drinks to his father's customers in his holidays from the tender age of twelve. But the stories, some of them fabulous and more amusing or poignant for being real, are not told with nostalgia for the past. Patiently, as he pieces together his own backstory, he sees that it is a tiny fragment overlaying a much larger picture. The clash of indigenous inhabitants with a southerly expansion of Bantu tribes and the newly arrived colonists is developed as a secondary storyline, told in small vivid vignettes which run through the memoir as threads of reason. Its scope is vast but its tone is frank and disarmingly personal