Role of a Lifetime

Twenty-five award-winning short stories from the Twisted Stringybark Short Story Awards will intrigue and delight you in this anthology of twisted tales from Australian and international short story writers.

"I don’t want this to seem like a sob story. I’m not trying to reach out for help. I’d just like to tell my story because I’m not like everyone else. Because I remember.
I remember being born — my first glimpse of the world, wet and a little sticky, everything glazed and out of focus as my undeveloped eyes took it all in. I mean, I don’t remember every second of it, not like it was yesterday, but I do have a memory of it, and that’s more than most can say."
— from 'Peter the Orphan' by Debbie Kaye

"She moved slowly, unsure of herself; self-conscious of his gaze, and her own anxieties; are my breasts too small? Is my bum big enough? So many images of what her femininity could or should look like flashed against her own images of herself. Cliché’s of ‘what-it-means-to-be-truly-naked’ tend to be irrelevant when undressing outside the sanctuary of your own room, your own mirror and outside your own thoughts that maybe your ass is looking nice today."
— from 'First Times' by Rashad Brathwaite

I" heard about the second missing girl when I visited Benedict’s Hair Salon for my regular cut and shampoo. A purple-haired apprentice chatted while draping me in a protective cape. In the mirror I noticed two men with notebooks talking to Benedict.
“Police,” whispered the apprentice. “Detectives.”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Not meant to say,” she replied but, with the importance of one-who-knows, offered, “missing person.”
Benedict ushered the detectives out and swooped on my chair, dismissing the apprentice to broom duty."

— from 'Under the Bed' by Joanne Ruppin