In The Best Australian Stories, acclaimed writer Maxine Beneba Clarke brings together our country’s leading literary talents. Herself an award-winning short-story writer, Beneba Clarke selects exceptional stories that resonate with experience and truth, and celebrate the art of storytelling. Previous contributors include Kate Grenville, Tony Birch, David Malouf, Kirsten Tranter, Anna Krien, Georgia Blain, Peter Goldsworthy, Fiona McFarlane, Elizabeth Harrower, Ryan O’Neill and Romy Ash. Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. In 2015 her short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the ABIA for Best Literary Fiction and the Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her critically acclaimed memoir, The Hate Race (2016), was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Indie Award for Non-Fiction and the Stella Prize. She is also the author of a picture book, The Patchwork Bike (2016), several poetry collections, and is a contributor to the Saturday Paper.

Award-winning poet, critic, editor and academic Sarah Holland-Batt takes the helm again as editor of this year’s Best Australian Poems. Previous contributors include Judith Beveridge, Stephen Edgar, Fiona Wright, Clive James, Lisa Gorton, Robert Adamson, Dorothy Porter, John Kinsella, David Malouf, Cate Kennedy and Les Murray. Sarah Holland-Batt is the author of The Hazards (UQP, 2015), which won the poetry prize at the 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, and Aria (UQP, 2008), which won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, the Arts ACT Judith Wright Award, and the FAW Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted in both the New South Wales and Queensland Premiers’ Literary Awards. She is presently a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Queensland University of Technology and the poetry editor of Island.

The best of the best This essential book takes a decade of Best Australian Stories and selects the most outstanding short fiction by the country's finest writers. These stories range widely in style and subject matter: there is drama and comedy, subtlety and extravagance, tales of suspense, love, fantasy, grief and revenge. Together they showcas...

In The Best Australian Stories 2011, Cate Kennedy presents the most outstanding short fiction of the past year.

This anthology brings together Australia's most striking literary talents and provides a platform for those unpublished gems. This year Stella Prize-winning author Charlotte Wood takes the helm, putting together yet another enchanting collection.

Winner, Prize for Fiction, The 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards ‘Melanie Cheng is an astonishingly deft and incisive writer. With economy and elegance, she creates a dazzling mosaic of contemporary life, of how we live now. Hers is a compelling new voice in Australian literature.’ Christos Tsiolkas Australia Day is a collection of stories by debut author Melanie Cheng. The people she writes abut are young, old, rich, poor, married, widowed, Chinese, Lebanese, Christian, Muslim. What they have in common—no matter where they come from—is the desire we all share to feel that we belong. The stories explore universal themes of love, loss, family and identity, while at the same time asking crucial questions about the possibility of human connection in a globalised world. Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. She was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016 and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2018. Room for a Stranger is her first novel. ‘A stunning debut that takes its place among Australian short story greats.’ AU Review ‘The book bears witness to the author’s empathetic eye, multicultural characterisation and easy facility with dialogue...This short story collection explores what it means to belong, to be Australian; its insight from different vantage points and its photo-realistic narrative make it an exciting and impressive debut.’ Judges’ Report, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, 2018 ‘All of her characters—a diverse cast of difference races and faiths—are searching for connection or a sense of belonging, and coming up short. Despite its title the focus of this collection is not explicitly on that increasingly controversial public holiday. Rather, it is on the struggles, internal and external, that occur when people from different backgrounds meet by chance or are brought together...Australia Day is a bittersweet, beautifully crafted collection that will be much admired by fans of Cate Kennedy and Tony Birch.’ Books+Publishing ‘What a wonderful book, a book with bite. These stories have a real edge to them. They are complex without being contrived, humanising, but never sentimental or cloying—and, ultimately, very moving.’ Alice Pung ‘In each story, Melanie Cheng creates an entire microcosm, peeling back the superficial to expose the raw nerves of contemporary Australian society. Her eye is sharp and sympathetic, her characters flawed and funny and utterly believable.’ Jennifer Down ‘Melanie Cheng’s stories are a deep dive into the diversity of humanity. They lead you into lives, into hearts, into unexplored places, and bring you back transformed.’ Michelle Wright ‘The characters stay in the mind, their lives and experiences mirroring many of our own, challenging us to think how we might respond in their place. An insightful, sometimes uncomfortable portrayal of multicultural Australia from an observant and talented writer.’ Ranjana Srivastava ‘If only the PM might pick up a copy, even by mistake.’ Saturday Paper ‘A wonderful feat of storytelling...Melanie Cheng is an exciting new writer.’ Readings ‘A sumptuous collection of fourteen short stories, which are disparate but with modern Australia or Australians at their heart, exploring issues of racism, infidelity, grief, parenthood, children and ageing...they are heartfelt and Melbourne-based Cheng paints the characters beautifully.’ Herald Sun ‘The happy surprise of Cheng’s work as a collection lies in her resolute grasp of the absolute normalcy of a culture that not so many years ago was divided and dually suspicious. The census gives us the facts but it takes fiction to make reality three-dimensional.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘The author’s empathetic eye and easy facility with dialogue make the anthology a strong debut, with the longer stories in particular offering breadth and depth...It feels like Cheng has taken a wide sample from the census to craft this inclusive portrait of contemporary Australia.’ Big Issue‘Cheng’s work is polished and affecting. Australia Day is that thing we all chase: a complex, engaging and timely read.’ Lifted Brow ‘Cheng paints a holistic snapshot of Australian life, with the result being a collection of stories that are simultaneously cynical and hopeful...The ambiguity inherent in labelling something “Australian" is also manifest in Cheng’s characters, prompting the reader to interrogate their own definition of what it means to be Australian.’ Kill Your Darlings ‘Wonderful.’ Christos Tsiolkas, Sydney Morning Herald’s Year in Reading ‘Melanie Cheng’s Australia Day brought this prodigal reader of short fiction back into the fold. And what better return than through Cheng’s creation of illuminated characters of colour—young, old, rich, poor, married, widowed, Muslim, Chinese...Cheng’s Australia Day explores the density and difficulty inherent in being culturally and physically different and serves to remind me that when our six families of adopted children from China gather in Queenscliffe on Australia Day each year, raising two flags on the pole instead of one that we, like all of Cheng’s characters, are restoring belonging from our individual and collective loss.’ Wheeler Centre, 2017 Favourites ‘This smart, engaging short story collection offers fresh perspectives on what it means to be Australian today. The stories also explore identity and belonging in a variety of other ways, delving into family, love, class and education. Big themes aside, every story is beautifully written and a total pleasure to read.’ Emily Maguire, Australian Women’s Weekly '[Cheng’s] individual characters suggest the ways in which we might move forward...Australia Day imagines a tomorrow where we can love our communities, our celebrations and our food, without leaving behind critical good taste.’ Sydney Review of Books

Best Australian Yarns is a substantial and definitive collection of factual and fanciful Aussie stories, humor and anecdotes—the result of decades of researching popular Aussie culture and history and yarning to mates and other colorful characters from all parts of Australia and all walks of life. This collection includes tall stories from the bush, reminiscences from the racetrack and shearing shed, railway yarns, stories from the world of show business, Aboriginal legends and humor, digger yarns from both world wars, ghost stories, monsters, bunyips, and yowies... and many things you never knew about our amazing history and the characters who made it—the pioneers, heroes, convicts, bushrangers, eccentrics, and brave and forgotten men and women whose fascinating lives and achievements created the Aussie spirit that we all love. While the stories range from poignant to hilarious, many simply describe unusual coincidences, strange occurrences, or simple everyday humorous events with a refreshing understatement that vividly evokes a vanishing Australia where looking for a good laugh was a key component of a cheekier national character and a simpler lifestyle.