The Whip Hand Stories

Who holds the whip hand? From a young mother stealing back her child to a disillusioned lover seeking revenge with a potion, from house cleaners contemplating a life of crime to a woman parting ways with Jesus, these are stories of people living on the edge. In their collections ‘The Returning’ and ‘Playing Dead’, Mihaela Nicolescu and Nadine Browne illuminate the complexity of the everyday with compassionate but unflinching accounts of the ways in which people gain, lose or reclaim control of their lives.

Nadine Browne was raised as a born-again Christian and wound up an agnostic studying theology at Monash University. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Westerly and Antipodes. Mihaela Nicolescu was born in Romania, brought up in Sweden, and then spent 13 years in London, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. She was guest editor for three issues of the World Arts Platform publication Write from the Heart, celebrating the work of writers who use English as a second language.