Books published by Spinifex Press

A powerful collection of poetry about schizophrenia, with an introduction for young people, discussing the causes/effects .

How do you decide to live? Or do others make that decision for you? In this lyrical novel, Beryl Fletcher explores the paradoxes of modern life. As a new academic, Julia finds her beliefs challenged by her students, reinforced by her friend's mistreatment and dismissed by her family. Just as her mother sought freedom from her family's rural poverty, Julia and her sister Isobel, search for their own solace finding it in different and disparate places.

In this ground-breaking book, Judy Atkinson skilfully and sensitively takes readers into the depths of sadness and despair and, at the same time, raises us to the heights of celebration and hope. She presents a disturbing account of the trauma suffered by Australia''s Indigenous people and the resultant geographic and generational ''trauma trails'' spread throughout the Country. Then, through the use of a culturally appropriate research approach called Dadirri: Listening to one another, Judy presents and analyses the stories of a number of Indigenous people. From her analysis of these ''stories of pain, stories of healing'', she is able to point both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous readers in the direction of change and healing.

With a delicate but ironic touch leavened with gentle humor, the awardwinning author of Another Year in Africa, Safe Houses, and Last Walk in Naryshkin Park presents characters ranging from a political activist under house arrest to the child of immigrant parents caught between two cultures.

Women are rarely mentioned in the literature as owners of country in their own right or as decision-making individuals; they appear as wives and mothers, their relationship to the jukurrpa always mediated through another. Yet I believe women enjoyed direct access to the jukurrpa from which flowed into rights and responsibilities in land, a power base as independent economic producers and a high degree of control over their own lives in marriage, residence, economic production, reproduction and sexuality. Living in the community, developing friendships that have spanned decades, award-winning author Diane Bell shines a light on the importance of women's role in Australian Aboriginal desert culture.

The C-Word is an honest and forthright account of cancer. It deals with the loneliness the partner of a sufferer faces, the gruelling treatments of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and the terror and calm of facing death. A story of a powerful lesbian partnership, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of community.

The poems in this collection are an evocative documentation of the harrowing experiences of a child living in a hostile and unhappy home. The reader is shown the pain, the bitterness and the mixed emotions that accompany the experiences of growing up in a family torn apart by domestic violence and alcoholism.

Reading this book is like falling through a faultline, as we respond to poesis, both as poetry and as thought creation. Margaret Somerville attended the 1984 Pine Gap Women''s Peace Camp where urban women and Aboriginal women demonstrated against military bases. As she moved through the landscape of this and other very different places, she recorded her interactions: with Aboriginal women in the desert in the mountains and at home, and with white women in the tropics and at home. It is a thoughtful challenge of all that we think. She concludes with reflections on the architecture of love.

Josie and Eliza witness an event that changes their lives forever.

Laurene Kelly's first young adult novel introduces us to fourteen-year-old Julie, who is struggling with a terrible home life, but could never imagine the horror that is about to destroy her family forever. She dreams of a new life, away from her abusive father, but when her mother doesn't arrive to meet Julie and her brother Toby after school as planned, her hopes are shattered. She is told there was an accident, but something more is wrong...

From the author of the acclaimed 'Godmothers' comes a new and startling novel. Beginning in the South Pacific and stretching back to a Mediterranean past, Sandi Hall explores a friendship that could affect the history of the world. When Dory Previn asked Did Jesus have a sister? Sandi Hall discovered that he did.

When Eadie Wilt disappears during the flood, everyone thinks she has drowned. But Siddy Church''s granddaughter has more life to live in a household filled with stories and larger-than-life characters.

Cathie Dunsford's much-loved Cowrie returns. The Journey Home follows her through her passions for life, love, food and challenge. Peopled by a diverse array of characters: Benny, the outrageous film-maker; Peta, who Cowrie falls in love with; and the student DK, who has a few things to learn. Torn between her newly-made friendships in California and her roots in her homeland, Cowrie discovers that there is a price to pay for exile even when it's voluntary.

The Silicon Tongue is centred on the life of London-born Alice who was brought to New Zealand as a servant in the 1930s. Tricked by the authorities into believing she was an orphan, Alice tells her story into the tape recorder of a mysterious oral historian and discloses family secrets of rape and adoption. She discovers a kinship with a teenage nethead called Pixel and learns that old women can fly in cyberspace along with the young. Meanwhile, AliceOs daughter Joy finds out that when it comes to family stories there is always more than one version of the truth.

First there was the detective novel with its stubble-chinned PI. Then came the feminist super-sleuths. Feisty, fierce and real. Now there's Figments of a Murder. And Babes. Babes is about lust. Babes is about power. But what else is she up to? In her world women are torn asunder by love and lust, by murder and menace. Babes says she calls the shots. But does she?

They came from the stetl to a new land, to a new life. Another year in Africa, they said, another year in exile. Old bonds break as they adjust from the old world of pogroms to their new life in Africa. Six-year-old Ruth is haunted by memories of tragedy and persecution that are not even hers. Award-winning author, Rose Zwi, evokes with tenderness the 1930s and 40s with a tale of loss of innocence alongside the stirrings of Apartheid.

Molly Rose Moon dreamt of worms the night before she married Jimmy Brown in Tooting Bec. The young couple were on their way to Australia. When Molly agrees to go on a journey across hemispheres she's looking for an escape from home. Once there she meets Marj. Fat Marj. Imago is a story of love and obsession, of seduction and transformations. The threading together of skins, of bodies. It's a story of metamorphosis, taking and eating, larvae and pupae, the risks of stagnation. Possibilities of death.

An essential contribution to the history of the women's movement.

Cowrie travels to Hawai'i and as she circles the island in an old pick-up truck we discover the tokens of her heritage. Sensual and sexual language brings the earth to life, and Cowrie too as she tests the limits of her endurance and explores her erotic connection with the earth. Island life erupts through the descriptions and you can taste the tropical fruit, the fish cooked in banana leaves and coconut, and smell the sweet fresh ginger.

Powerful and moving stories from survivors of sexual assault.

Who invented hieroglyphics? Who did Einstein's mathematics? Who led the defence of Viet Nam in 40 AD? Who invented the first computer? Who built the pyramid at Giza? Who developed the merino sheep? Who was the first writer in the world? Who invented the wheel? All were women. When the next person asks: Where are all the famous women artists/inventors/architects/writers/scientists?-this book will make it easy to find their names.

Lesbians are often told that we have no culture, that we have no history, and yet lesbians are always rediscovering hidden histories, literary traditions, codes and behaviours that have been obscured, obliterated or proclaimed irrelevant. Sybil: The Glide of Her Tongue challenges that version of history. Gillian Hanscombe has written an exhilarating and richly textured collection of poems.

Cowrie boards a ship bound for Moruroa Atoll during the French nuclear tests. She is in for a rough ride. As international attention is focused on the Pacific and the environment, the stakes rise. She is joined by Sahara, a young peace activist from England and Marie-Louise, a French nuclear physicist. But can they be trusted? Can anyone be trusted? With sensuous writing and a deep knowledge of the traditions, the reader can feel the rock of the sea, taste the food, and fear the attacks on the peace flotilla as it approaches Moruroa Atoll. Dive into a luscious feast of language and imagery.

What does a place mean? An old kauri villa with a one-roomed school attached is the place that has sustained a writer, Beryl Fletcher, through turbulent years and an obsessive love. Sent away at the age of six for a few months to the house at Karamu, she discovered books and spent many nights reading by candlelight, listening to the call of the moreporks. Karamu became a symbolic landscape of safety that helped her to survive.