These Flying Islands Blog

 Rae Desmond Jones (11 August 1941 – 27 June 2017) was an Australian poet, novelist, short story writer and politician.

Jones was born in the mining town of Broken Hill in the far West of New South Wales. Although many of his poems and stories are concerned with urban experience, he always felt that desert landscapes were central to his language and perception. He wrote in colloquial language, which sometimes exploded in powerful narratives packed with ambiguous sexual and violent imagery, especially in his earlier poems and some of his novels. His original and bleak vision was frequently mediated by gusts of earthy humour and unexpected sensitivity and honesty.

He became a popular mayor of Ashfield, an inner Sydney Municipality, from 2004 to 2006, and during that period held together a broad coalition of Labor Party, Green and Independent representatives. He said that for him “poetry and politics are mutually contradictory, and he finds consolation from each in the arms of the other.”

Susan Fealy is a poet and clinical psychologist. Her poems have been published in many Australian journals and anthologies including Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2017. Others appear in the United States, India and Sweden. Among awards for her poetry are the NSW Society of Women Writers National Poetry Prize and the Henry Kendall Poetry Award. Her first collection, Flute of Milk (UWAP), won the 2017 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, the 2018 NSW Society of Women Writers Book Award (Poetry) and shortlisted for the 2018 Mary Gilmore Award. The Earthing of Rain, translated into Chinese by Iris Fan Xing, was published by Flying Island Books in 2019. 

I’m very happy to be a member of Flying Islands, with a new collection of poetry, Somewhere North (working title) to be a future Flying Islands Pocket Book of Poems. I’m a Blue Mountains based writer of poetry, short stories and novels that are seeking publishers.

 My collection Lives of the Dead and Other Stories was published in 2013 by Spineless Wonders, and a novella Flying Foxes was short-listed in the Carmel Bird Award and published as an eBook in 2015. My stories and poetry have appeared many literary magazines and anthologies including in Overland, Island Magazine, Going Down Swinging, Hecate and the Margaret River Press short story collection. Earth Eaters, a novel, was a winner in the Varuna LitLink award in 2010, and extracts appear in Lives of the Dead. My short stories were performed at Little Fictions events in Sydney, and were featured in the 2018 Story-Fest. Chimera, a chapbook of short prose and poetry was recently published by Rochford Press.

I have a doctorate in Creative Arts (University of Western Sydney). My website is  http://janeskelton.com.au/