Beam of Light

Stories

John Kinsella

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English

transit lounge
01 September 2024

Short stories; Australian Fiction

Shifts in tone, setting and narration create a sense of the uncanny in Beam of Light, Kinsella's haunting collection of stories.

A man is disturbed by the sight of a familiar dining table and chairs atop an impending bonfire of bulldozed trees, a girl finds a fox skeleton and feels compelled to protect its spirit by dispersing its bones over the valley, a couple are invited to dinner by Christians new to town

an occasion that quickly turns heavy and strange, two men awkwardly meet again when their daughters attend the same ballet class, and a man and woman struggle to balance the threats of addiction and poverty with the joys and hopes of a new baby.

Stories range in location from Ireland to Germany to Greece to the Australian countryside

threatened by catastrophic heat, land clearing, housing estates and strip malls

and Kinsella's characters, so often on the edge, sear the consciousness.

Praise for John Kinsella's writing:

'The stories never forget they were written on land with history; Aboriginal land that was stolen, and the blood that was shed, and the skin of colonisation over a deep past.'

Rachel Watts, Westerly

'Impressively skilful and incisively wise.'

Riley Faulds, Plumwood Mountain Journal

'What they all have in common is depth of characterisation most commonly found in a full-length novel.'

Erich Mayer, Arts Hub

By: John Kinsella
Imprint: transit lounge
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9781923023161
ISBN 10: 1923023160
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 01 September 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

John Kinsella lives on Ballardong Noongar land at 'Jam Tree Gully' in the Western Australian wheatbelt and has also lived in USA, UK, Ireland and other zones. His recent publications include the poetry volumes The Argonautica Inlandica (Vagabond, 2023) and Spirals: Collected Poems Volume Three (2014-2023) (UWAP 2024). Previous story collections include the awards-listed Pushing Back (Transit Lounge 2021) and Old Growth (Transit Lounge, 2017). His verse novel Cellnight was published by Transit Lounge in 2023.