Winner of the 2008 AWP Award for the Novel From 1941 to 1947, eighteen thousand Italian prisoners of war were sent to Australia. The Italian surrender that followed the downfall of Mussolini had created a novel circumstance: prisoners who theoretically were no longer enemies. Many of these exiles were sent to work on isolated farms, unguarded. The Paperbark Shoe is the unforgettable story of Gin Boyle—an albino, a classically trained pianist, and a woman with a painful past. Disavowed by her wealthy stepfather, her unlikely savior is the farmer Mr. Toad—a little man with a taste for women's corsets. Together with their two children, they weather the hardship of rural life and the mockery of their neighbors. But with the arrival of two Italian prisoners of war, their lives are turned upside down. Thousands of miles from home, Antonio and John find themselves on Mr. and Mrs. Toad's farm, exiles in the company of exiles. The Paperbark Shoe is a remarkable novel about the far-reaching repercussions of war, the subtle violence of displacement, and what it means to live as a captive—in enemy country, and in one's own skin.

Gin, the albino, marries to escape the confines of an asylum. Toad, a small man who wears corsets, marries to prove his manhood. Together they are freaks—feared and ridiculed by the remote farming community in which they live. Then into their lives come two Italian POWs bringing music, sensuality and a love that will fan the flames of small town bigotry.

** Winner of the 2020 Jewish Fiction Award ** “A novel of wisdom and uncertainty, of love in its greater and lesser forms, and of the struggle between how it should be and how it is. It is impossible not to be moved.” —Amy Bloom, author of White Houses "This book brings the reader into the heart of a close-knit Jewish family and their joys, loves, and sorrows . . . A marvelous book by a masterful writer.” —Audrey Niffenegger, author of Her Fearful Symmetry and The Time Traveler’s Wife "As beautiful as it is unexpected.” —Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl Through one woman's life at a moment of surprising change, the award-winning author Goldie Goldbloom tells a deeply affecting, morally insightful story and offers a rare look inside Brooklyn's Chasidic community On Division Avenue, just a block or two up from the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Surie Eckstein is soon to be a great-grandmother. Her ten children range in age from thirteen to thirty-nine. Her in-laws, postwar immigrants from Romania, live on the first floor of their house. Her daughter Tzila Ruchel lives on the second. She and Yidel, a scribe in such demand that he makes only a few Torah scrolls a year, live on the third. Wed when Surie was sixteen, they have a happy marriage and a full life, and, at the ages of fifty-seven and sixty-two, they are looking forward to some quiet time together. Into this life of counted blessings comes a surprise. Surie is pregnant. Pregnant at fifty-seven. It is a shock. And at her age, at this stage, it is an aberration, a shift in the proper order of things, and a public display of private life. She feels exposed, ashamed. She is unable to share the news, even with her husband. And so for the first time in her life, she has a secret—a secret that slowly separates her from the community. Into this life of counted blessings comes a surprise. Surie is pregnant. Pregnant at fifty-seven. It is a shock. And at her age, at this stage, it is an aberration, a shift in the proper order of things, and a public display of private life. She feels exposed, ashamed. She is unable to share the news, even with her husband. And so for the first time in her life, she has a secret—a secret that slowly separates her from the community.

The contributions of the Midwest and, specifically, Chicago to LGBTQ literature have been invaluable yet largely uncelebrated over the last century. This anthology charts a map of queer Chicago and showcases its thriving urban arts community, which boasts a unique history, legacy, and sensibility deeply rooted in the urban Midwest. Here is a first-rate collection of queer voices from Chicago's literary landscape. Celebrated writers Edmund White, Achy Obejas, Sharon Bridgforth, Brian Bouldrey, E. Patrick Johnson, Carol Anshaw, David Trinidad, and Mark Zubro are joined by emerging voices from the queer literary scene. These pieces span all literary genres, from fiction and poetry to memoir and essays, and portray a full gamut of gay Chicago lives from the everyday to the quirky, from public spectacles to quiet intimacies, from family life to nightlife, from dating to marriage, from loving to mourning. The writing that comprises this volume, which seeks to claim a queer space on the literary continuum, is surprising, smart, hilarious, and heart wrenching. "I grew up in and I'm married to Los Angeles, I had a ten year long hot affair with my adopted home NYC, but I have to admit I really left my diasporic midwestern gay heart in Chicago! Windy City Queer is a wonderful deepening of our national imagination about one of our greatest cities and regions."—Tim Miller, author of Body Blows and 1001 Beds

Anne Aly, Liz Byrski, Sarah Drummond, Mehreen Faruqi, Goldie Goldbloom, Krissy Kneen, Jeanine Leane, Brigid Lowry and Pat Torres are among fifteen voices recounting what it is like to be a woman on the other side of 40. These are stories of identity and survival, and a celebration of getting older and wiser, and becoming more certain of who you are and where you want to be.

War is traditionally considered a male experience. By extension, the genre of war literature is a male-dominated field, and the tale of the battlefield remains the privileged (and only canonised) war story. In Australia, although women have written extensively about their wartime experiences, their voices have been distinctively silenced. Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend calls for a re-definition of war literature to include the numerous voices of women writers, and further recommends a re-reading of Australian national literatures, with women’s war writing foregrounded, to break the hold of a male-dominated literary tradition and pass on a vital, but unexplored, women’s tradition. Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend examines the rich body of World Wars I and II and Vietnam War literature by Australian women, providing the critical attention and treatment that they deserve. Donna Coates records the reaction of Australian women writers to these conflicts, illuminating the complex role of gender in the interpretation of war and in the cultural history of twentieth-century Australia. By visiting an astonishing number of unfamiliar, non-canonical texts, Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend profoundly alters our understanding of how Australian women writers have interpreted war, especially in a nation where the experience of colonising a frontier has spawned enduring myths of identity and statehood.

Featuring both established and emerging Western Australian writers, this short story anthology includes both fiction and creative nonfiction. A quirky and memorable collection, it centers on “who we are and what we want to be”—ideas that will resonate globally despite the regional origin of the contributors. The distinctive voices highlighted here present joy and pain in equal measure with humor and feeling.