I had a brilliant time last Thursday at the launch of The Sleepers Almanac No. 8 at Trades Hall in Melbourne.
In the Almanac is a long short story of mine called ‘Two’ — I wrote a little bit about in my last blog post.
The directors of Sleepers Publishing, Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn:
Sam Twyford-Moore, writer and Director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival, launched the book. (Read his speech here.)
Ben Birchall read from his short story, ‘Six-Week Performance Appraisal, Walter Birchall’:
Mel Hall with ‘Four a.m.’:
Laurie Steed with ‘Skin I’m In’:
Belinda Rule with ‘Statement of Claims On Behalf Of My Father’:
Vanessa Russell with ‘Pilgrimage’:
Bookshop by Readings:
Zoe Dattner with Eric Yoshiaki Dando, whose story The Eulogy (read it online here) is also in Almanac No. 8:
Other contributors to this Almanac are Helen Addison-Smith, Dieter Barkhoff, Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, Samantha Dagg, Rhett Davis, SJ Finn, Madeleine Griffeth, Jonathan Griffiths, Melanie Joosten, Isabelle Li, Eleanor Limprecht, Eva Lomski, Anthony Lynch, Gay Lynch, Paul Mitchell, Michelle Radtke, Elizabeth Tan, Lucy Treloar and Andrew Weldon.
The book is available in paper book and ebook formats: more details here.
You can also read every story from this and previous Sleepers Almanacs on the Sleepers iPhone app.
To coincide with the launch of the new Almanac, Readings asked contributors to write about their favourite short stories. I chose ‘William and Mary’ by Roald Dahl. (Murakami’s ‘Tony Takitani’ a close second.)
P.S. Other recommended reading:
Sleepers launched a novel in February called Inheritance by Balli Kaur Jaswal. I thought it was great. Details here.
The Lifted Brow‘s latest issue, ‘What even is Perth?’ also launched in Melbourne last Thursday. Here is a sample from the issue — a short story by Almanac author Elizabeth Tan.