Knitting and Other Stories

In Barry Divola's winning story, Knitting, the narrator is a perceptive, no-nonsense, subversive figure who is as hard on herself as she is on the world around her. She is a 'guerilla knitter' who by the end of the story is beginning to warm to her circumstances, the people around her, and, most importantly, herself. The second prize-winning story Laps, by Sally Naylor-Hampson, is focused on the ocean and adolescent sexual experience, at Belongil, seventeen years earlier. In this case between an older woman, the wife of the swimming coach, and a fifteen-year old boy, Jasper. The South West Prize winning story by Vahri McKenzie, I Shine, Not Burn, is about family and family history. The underlying issue is the extent to which knowledge of the past may be destructive to following generations. This is a collection of tightly written, graceful stories exploring the familiar and the strange by both emerging and established writers.