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  transit lounge, transit, independent press, self publishing, self-publishing, publishing, literary publishing, essay, travel, travel narrative, Melbourne, Australia
transit lounge
is an independent press dedicated to the publication of exciting new fiction and non-fiction. We have a particular interest in creative literary publishing that explores the relationships between East and West, entertains and promotes insights into diverse cultures and encompasses diverse genres. |
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'Ma Folie Française (My French Folly)' **JUST OUT!** 'I once lived in a place far, far away. A land where "les folies", were a regular and standard occurrence. Where each day presented new challenges and endless temptations sought to ruin me.' Marisa Raoul has travelled with her European parents, worked as a flight attendant for an international airline and moved house more than once. She isn’t one to be perturbed by new challenges or foreign destinations. However, when she falls in love with a Frenchman, Jean, and they decide to take up residence in a quiet, south-western corner of France, life turns out to be an exciting adventure – so bizarre and such a 'folie'. In her delightful memoir she takes us to the heart of her 'medieval' B&B, with incidents full of Gaelic humour and eccentricity. A quiet 'tree-change' turns outs to be a hilarious, surprising and romantic romp, which lasts a decade. Ma Folie Française is a book for anyone who has ever wanted to fall in love with a foreign country. Charming, passionate, and inspired it will make you want to follow your dreams, pack up your life, and shift to France. "Marisa Raoul has written a vivacious contemporary tale of life love and dreaming. It is a sheer joy to read."
Marisa Raoul was born in Sydney in 1961 to an Italian father and English mother. Her mixed heritage led to her intense passion for travel, foreign languages and diverse cultures. She spent her sixteenth year living in Rome and travelling throughout Europe with her parents. Most of her early professional life was spent working in the Sales department of Qantas Airways, then onto Cabin Crew where she met her husband. She has travelled to 25 countries. Marisa left Australia in 1991 to reside in France for a ten-year period where she ran a successful Bed and Breakfast and worked as an Interpreter and English teacher for the ‘Limoges Chamber of Commerce and Industry’. On her return to Australia, she became involved in the field of Indigenous Arts. She moved to Alice Springs where she worked within that field and on her return to the east coast, continued to promote this art as a freelance consultant. She now writes full time from her home in Tasmania. She specialises in the fields of children’s novels and non-fictional adult works. She also enjoys writing freelance articles for various magazines and community newspapers.
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'The New Angel' 'You know what this poem means Bahram? It’s about love, and loneliness. The reed is cut off from the other reeds. So it wants to return, but it can’t. So it cries instead, and every time someone blows into the reed flute, it’s the sad song of the reed’s loneliness that makes people cry, the sad story of its loneliness and yearning for love.' The New Angel is the moving story of Bahram and Fereshteh (Persian for 'angel') growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. At its centre this is a love story between two adolescents at odds with the society in which they live and of the ways in which our lives can be changed forever by external events over which we have no control. The author lived in Iran until the age of 14 before immigrating to Australia. The result is a novel that is hugely evocative and that indirectly conveys through story the destructive impact of fundamentalism on the individual. Alizadeh writes superbly of the pains and beauties of adolescence and the devastating ways in which catastrophic events can shape out thoughts and actions. Bahram and Fereshteh capture our hearts, and ultimately break them. The New Angel engages and disturbs the reader as it moves with suspense and purpose towards its startling climax. "Alizadeh is a rare writer. He expresses his contemporary thinking in a beautiful, lyrical prose as well as in the poetry of the past. The New Angel is at once provocative and enjoyable, an explosive debut novel that is destined to divide opinion."
Ali Alizadeh is the author of poetry: Eyes in Times of War (Salt Publishing 2006) and with Kenneth Avery, translations of the poems of a Sufi master, Fifty Poems of Attar (re.press 2007) and theatre: A Sufi Valentine (La Mama 2004), Elixir (The Storeroom 2002). His poetry has been published in journals including Overland, Kalimat, Masthead and Cordite. His translations of the work of Rumi and others have appeared in Southerly and Said the Rat! (Melbourne: Black Pepper Press) He is a Bachelor of Arts from Griffith University and a PhD in Professional writing from Deakin University and has tutored and lectured in creative arts at Box Hill Institute of TAFE, Deakin University and China. He currently lives in Ankara, Turkey, with his wife Penelope and their son, Jasper.
Click here to read reviews.
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‘Tarab: Travels with My Guitar’ From the Sudan to Northern New South Wales, Tarab is an epic, mesmerizing tale of high adventure and the search for meaning. Carl Cleves escapes national service in Belgium to live in South Africa at the height of the Apartheid era. So begins the adventures and quests, wanderings and narrow escapes, mishaps and illuminations of a guitar-toting troubadour in his roles as young beat poet, law student, single father, ethnomusicologist, relief worker in India and recording star in Brazil. Cleves’s page turning memoir is no simple music biography, but rather the story of an artist’s quest for Tarab: a place where music and poetry bestow true bliss upon the lucky one. It’s by turns philosophical, funny, adventurous and insightful. "Thank heavens for Carl Cleves! As Director of the Byron Bay Writers Festival, my days are long and opportunities for travel rare. Through Tarab, I have been thrust headlong into an extraordinary tour of wild times and wilder places. I have laughed, gasped and loved every startling page, courtesy of this insanely talented man."
Carl Cleves was born in Belgium. After completing his Doctorate of Law, in Belgium, he set out on a life of travel which took him to over fifty countries, eventually leading him to settle in Byron Bay, Australia. In Brazil he released 2 acclaimed albums. In Australia Carl established himself as a notable songwriter, with his compositions appearing on countless CD compilations and winning industry awards. His songs have been applauded for their lyrical and poetical content. In 1991 he founded the musical act The Hottentots with Parissa Bouas. The Hottentots– www.thehottentots.com– have recorded 4 CDs, and have twice won NCEIA Best Album awards. In 2000 their song ‘Put your hand in mine’ was performed by a 700 voice choir and transmitted, as part of ABC TV’s Today program to 60 countries. Their fourth and CD ‘Turn Back the Tide’ won the Australian Songwriters’ Association Award and the 2006 Music Oz Award. The Hottentots have performed at all major Australian festivals, in Europe and Latin America and in 2006 travelled to Madagascar, where Carl made a documentary about Malagasy culture and music to be released in the coming months. In August 2007 Carl was awarded the prize for Best Lyrics 2007 at the Australian Songwriters' Association Awards. His song ‘The Rose of Kordofan’ appears on his new CD ‘All Alone.’ Carl has also released a collection of songs that capture in music the spirit of his book, Tarab. Carl holds degrees in African music and contemporary composition and in recent years has been lecturing in song writing and world music at Southern Cross University, Lismore. More at: www.carlcleves.com
Click here to read reviews.
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'India Vik' "Unlike many who write of India, Liz Gallois is not interested in nostalgia, even if some of her characters suffer from that condition. The India she offers us in India Vik speaks in many voices, is acutely observed and deeply felt. This highly evocative collection of interlinked stories is a wonderful introduction to the work of a new writer and the unexpected worlds that await the modern traveller." Travel to India and be changed forever. Delicately spiced with humour this is an intriguing work of fiction, by an exciting new talent, where sexuality, loss and yearning are always simmering just beneath the surface. From Chennai to Sydney Liz Gallois captures both Indians and Westerners in new and unexpected guises, their relationships teetering on the edge, or caught at odds by the allure and the chaos of the subcontinent. In moments of tenderness or lust Jill croons, ‘Davood, my little toy boy.’ He likes her cool touch on his cheek, smoothing the soft down. He shaves, but so far the desired bristles refuse to sprout.
Liz Gallois is a fiction writer and sessional worker for the Mental Health Review Board who lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has been published in Australian literary magazines and was an Age Short Story competition winner in 2004. She has lived in France but has had a longer relationship with India that started with reading E M Forster’s A Passage to India. She has made many visits to India and hopes soon to settle for some months or years in the seaside city of Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu. Click here to read reviews.
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'Emails From The Edge: A Journey Through Troubled Times' "Powerful and compelling, an extraordinarily moving account of one man's journey through Asia, Europe and within." He’s been expelled from Syria on suspicion of terrorism, encountered ‘Osama bin Laden’ in a Tehran bazaar, been dragged from the Hungarian parliament in handcuffs and interviewed with the editor-in-chief of al-Jazeera, all during a remarkable two-year journey by wheelchair across Eurasia. Walkley Award-winning journalist Ken Haley’s travels take in 41 countries and, post-September 11, turn him into an eyewitness to the ‘war on terror’ from the other side of the frontline. In Emails from the Edge he portrays life in the Middle East as it really is, not as the media portray it, and draws an intriguing parallel with his own life. With great humour, and not a hint of sentimentality, he lays bare his darkest times, when he plunged over the precipice into madness, and reveals the wanderlust that led him to the heart of the world’s hot spots. Few have written so well about their own descent into insanity, a world at war and the beauty of travel.
Ken Haley is one of Australia’s most widely travelled authors. To date he has visited 109 countries, 57 of these on his own two feet, and 52 in a wheelchair. He became a paraplegic in 1991, but as far as Ken is concerned the only difference this has made is that he now observes the world from a sitting position. A journalist by profession his experiences include stints on the foreign desk of The Times, Sunday Times and The Observer in London, the Gulf Daily News in Bahrain and the Oman Daily Observer. He has also worked at The Age, Melbourne, and as a newspaper sub-editor in Athens, Hong Kong and Johannesburg. He currently lives in Melbourne. Click here to read reviews. |
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'Love in the place of rats' This is poetry that has other poets raving - daring, passionate and quixotic, yet deeply in touch with Australian poetic tradition, Love in the place of rats makes the head spin. The evocative cover photograph by Sam Shmith leads the reader into a reality that is at once global and local; the poet staring down his own ghosts in what is ultimately a hymn to love and Brisbane’s West End. "Love in the place of rats is a vital expression of the bond between poetic consciousness and historical reality, the daily quintessences of love, work and death in language that is sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful, always alive. Hardacre’s primary question is, are we to love with a ‘treacherous and passionate soul’, or are we ‘reduced to cheap music’. His poems are an extraordinary answer." "Love in the place of rats is a fiercely imaginative ride through the tropics of Brisbane and South-East Asia, tanked with picaresque tales of those ‘living the honda dream’, and churning with references from Conrad to Luscious Jackson beneath ‘sky like the smiths’ and ‘replacement birds’. These rapid-fire poems toppling with abundant observations and often witty asides – ‘religious as anthrax’ - breathlessly collide into a constant paean to love, the mysterious centre." "These poems sting with an almost breathless urgency yet retain a fragile lyrical
pulse. Paul Hardacre strings words into phrases and phrases into strange leaps
of association that insist on their own lines of continuity. Fantastic flashes
and everyday references rub fingers and shoulders, and the result haunts and
takes the reader on an intimate journey through feelings, memories, emotional
travels. Nothing is forbidden."
Paul Hardacre was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1974. He is the Managing Editor of papertiger media, publishers of the papertiger: new world poetry CDROM, hutt poetry ezine, anything i like art ezine, and the soi 3 modern poets imprint. Since 2004 Paul has spent time in Myanmar, Singapore, Pakistan, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, China, New Zealand, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United States, Italy, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos PDR, and Malaysia. With his long-time partner, artist and graphic designer Marissa Newell, he currently divides his time between Brisbane, Australia, and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Love in the place of rats is his second poetry collection. More at: www.paulhardacre.com |
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'Excess Baggage and Claim' Written in the voices of two gay men—an Australian tourist and a Singaporean local—Excess Baggage and Claim shines with a bright lucidity. What makes this book so startling is not that these poems about difficult self-discovery are sometimes shocking, but that they rise out of darkness, and a sense of dislocation, with such tenderness and courage. This is an extraordinary collection of poetry—a masterful collaboration by Singapore Literature Prize winner Cyril Wong and Australian poet Terry Jaensch. "These poems are odes to longing and desire, sung at 4am from the back bar of an impossible city where the borders have yet to be created and have yet to be dismantled. This is a shimmering, hard and beautiful collaboration." "Jaensch's always-deft phrasing and sense of metaphor twists the reader's expectations and compels us to watch more closely; Wong's candid, conversational style reveals the vagaries of faltering relationships and power plays. These characters take the microphone and sing; the confining world of their subculture setting the parameters for the universal lyrics of love and loss."
Terry Jaensch is a an Australian poet/actor and monologist based in Melbourne. His first book of poetry, Buoy ( Five Islands Press 2001) was highly commended in the Anne Elder Award by the Fellowship of Australian Writers. He has worked as a Writer-in-Community, Artist-in-Residence, Dramaturge and Artistic Director of the 2005 Melbourne Emerging Writers’ Festival. He is widely published in journals (hardcopy and on-line), both locally and internationally. His work has been broadcast on radio and in 2004 he was commissioned to write and record 15 monologues based on his childhood in a Ballarat orphanage for “Life Matters” ABC Radio National. This piece has since been reworked and performed for theatre as “Orphan’s Own Project.” He has a background in acting, having studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory and Herbert Berghof Studio in New York. In 2004/05 he was the recipient of an Asialink residency in Singapore.
Winner of the Singapore Literature Prize (2006), Cyril Wong is the author of five published collections of poetry, including like a seed with its singular purpose (Firstfruits, 2006). His poems have appeared in journals around the world, including Atlanta Review, Fulcrum 3, Poetry International, Dimsum, Poetry New Zealand, Wascana Review and the W.W. Norton & Co. anthology, Contemporary Voices from the East. He was a featured poet at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (UK), the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival (Brisbane, Australia) and the Singapore Writers' Festival. His poems have been adapted to dance, drama, film and music. These collaborations have been presented in various countries, including the 27th Bali Arts Festival and the Magdalena International Festival of Women in Contemporary Theatre (USA, 2005). More at: www.cyrilwong.com Click here to read reviews.
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'Sing, and Don't Cry: A Mexican Journal' - Michael McGirr, author of Bypass. ‘Why, I ask’ - and how readily these prescriptive words fall from my mouth – ‘why do they squander money on fireworks, instead of putting it aside for seed for next year’s crops, or saving it for emergencies?’ ‘Why?’ she says, and shrugs. ‘Well, just for the beauty of it.’ ‘But it’s all over in five minutes’, I say, ‘all gone.’ ‘Yes’, she says with a smile, ‘but you’re here, aren’t you?’
Click here to read reviews.
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'Vinyl Inside' You’re destined to fall in love with this quirky, bittersweet story of Elsie and Sterling and caravan park life in the ‘80s. What happens when the daughter you thought you would never see again turns up twenty years later? Dania’s arrival at Splashes Caravan Park in search of her mother forces the novel’s loveable characters to face the reality of their lives and to come to terms with the nature of regret. Brimming with delicious pop-culture references, this a story told with great warmth, humour and respect. Vinyl Inside is by turns hilarious, moving and unforgettable; a novel that allows us to feel affection for our past innocence and to ponder what has been lost and gained.
Rachel Matthews grew up in Shepparton, Victoria. She is a graduate of Deakin University (Bachelor of Arts), the University of Melbourne (Diploma of Education) and RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing diploma course. She currently teaches VCE English and Media studies at the Distance Education Centre Victoria, a government school that provides flexible learning for students who can’t attend mainstream classrooms. Rachel has written stories, poems and has had articles published in EQ magazine. An earlier version of Vinyl Inside was commended in the 2003 Australian Vogel awards. "Rachel Matthews’s novel is as warm as a caravan park barbecue grill, with characters that encourage the reader to keep inserting the twenty cent pieces. A terrific, compelling debut." "Vinyl Inside is my kind of book. Genuinely affectionate, authentic and funny." "An earthy tale sprinkled with pathos and humour." "Rachel Matthews has fashioned a book that is full of marvelous characters
and warmth, humor and wisdom. The eighties were a lot of fun after all."
Click here to read reviews. |
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'A History of the Great War: A Novel' It is 1914 and Bairnsdale, Australia, is filled with the news of a war in far off places. Ida Hallam, a young shop assistant, has fallen in love with Ralph Mitton a land surveyor, but Ralph is caught up in the romance and adventure of fighting for his country. Ida envies his freedom, but when he returns wounded and troubled she begins to understand something of the nature of what he has experienced. Years later Ida’s sons go off to fight in the Second World War.
Peter McConnell has a sharp understanding of the detail and sweep of history, of Australia’s connections with the East and of how world events impact on the daily life of the individual. A History of the Great War is a gentle, strangely haunting novel set in small town Victoria. Imbued with sadness, moments of happiness and quiet courage it is the moving story of one woman’s innocent life; of love, family and loss. Like a dream steeped in reality it is not easily forgotten. A truly Australian novel. ‘The pyramids themselves would turn to dust in the end.’ "The soul of the book is Ida's tapestry, onto which she stitches every image of importance from the years of her century, gently correcting the madness of "great events" with her own infinitely modest appraisal. World history seems small beside the statement Ida wrings out of huge disasters and tiny joys." "Powerful in its artful simplicity. A History of the Great War gives voice to an 'ordinary' life."
Click here to read reviews.
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'The Asking Game' Sydney, 2020—‘the city of water’. Alice’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. Alice, or Eve as she was once known, is hired to expose Eternity, the cult that was founded outside the small desert town where she was born. With Drew, the boy from upstairs, who may be spying on her or watching over her, she begins a dream-like road trip into the dead heart of Australia where the past unravels into the future with exhilarating speed. Why did her sister Lucy leave her and what is it that happened between them? Who was her mother? Questions are asked. Their answers haunt and unsettle. At its heart The Asking Game drives us to ask ourselves who we really are. Childhood, sibling rivalry, science and identity are all explored in a bold, tautly woven debut—‘a stylish thriller with literary sensibilities’. If you’re addicted to psychological thrillers or speculative fiction, or if you loved The Time Traveller’s Wife for its sharp psychological truths and complex emotions, you’ll want to read The Asking Game. ‘They moved from mirror to mirror as the ground gradually sloped away until, by the time they reached the last mirror, their faces were swimming in the polished surface at nearly the same height. And staring out at them were two sets of identical eyes: blue-grey black-grey steel-grey stone. Both girls paused mid-step. Eve noticed for the first time that her eyes were divided into slices of grey and blue and black. And so were Lucy’s. Their eyes were identical. Not just like each other: absolutely identical. They looked into their own eyes, and into each other’s, and couldn’t tell them apart.’
Rose Michael is a thirty-four-year-old Australian journalist and academic. The Asking Game was a runner-up in the 2002 Allen & Unwin/Vogel award for an unpublished manuscript – where it was described as ‘well-written, well-structured, complex and clever’, as a ‘very sophisticated, well-paced thriller with literary sensibilities’ and as ‘a compelling, ambitious and ultimately convincing piece of near-future Australian sci-fi’ – and edited extracts have been published in Griffith REVIEW 4, Best Australian Stories 2004, Island and Muse. Ex-editor of Australian Bookseller & Publisher and the Weekly Book Newsletter, Rose is currently working on her next novel: The Art of Navigation – an extract of which was runner-up in this year’s Ditmar/Conjure awards. Click here to read reviews. |
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'Love and Wigs' Eight quirky b&w photographs accompany the writing. Barry Scott works as a literary awards and events coordinator for the State Library of Victoria. In 2004 he undertook a three-month Asialink residency in New Delhi. In October 2005 he will be a guest of the Ubud Writer's Festival. Click here to read reviews. |
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'A Long Walk in the Himalaya. A Trek from the Ganges to Kashmir.' Weare’s finely rendered story of his five-month trek from the sacred source of the Ganges through the Kullu Valley, Zanskar and Ladakh to his houseboat in Kashmir is remarkably entertaining. The people he meets and travels with are fully-fledged characters that the reader comes to know and care about while the Himalaya, captured in all their variety, cast their spell. It is as if the act of walking allows the author to fully understand all the nuances – spiritual, environmental, social and political – of this inspiring region. A Long Walk in the Himalaya is a book to savour, a book that the reader will return to again and again. "Garry Weare is enigmatic, funny and he has an enormous conscience. He brings into the story of his Himalayan traverse a succession of vignettes about people’s lives that he meets along the way, relevant history, natural history observations and a delightful sprinkling of his inimitable sense of humour. The warmth of his relationships with his old Kashmiri friends and various people from the trekking fraternity adds a wonderful dimension to this journeyman's tale." Click here to read reviews. |
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