Where the Rivers Meet : New Writing from Australia

More than two dozen contemporary novelists, essayists, and poets are collected in this remarkable collection of work from Australia, a complex country with a multilayered history. Among these outstanding writers is a growing number of Indigenous authors, whose voices are included here. Their stories--many of them previously untold in literature--deepen and expand our understanding of the experiences that comprise Australia's past, present, and future. Both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors in Where the Rivers Meet address their country's struggle to create a shared citizenship and sense of belonging. Some seek the key to this shared belonging in the creation of a more just relationship to the land and in issues of ownership. Others find clarity and rejuvenation in the country's harsh and beautiful wildness. Still others emphasize, in the words of Melissa Lucashenko, that we need to hear "the small, quiet stories in a human mouth" in order to truly know this land and its people.