An Unknown Sky and Other Stories

An Unknown Sky and Other Stories

Susan Midalia's stories are about ordinary people who harbour secrets and fears beneath their everyday lives.

After her first collection of stories was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Midalia brings us a second collection with a compelling variety of characters.

All of them are 'travellers' in search of connection and belonging: Tourists in Moscow and Vienna confronted by the weight of history. A young student teacher discovering her capacity for compassion. A teenage boy defending his mother's reputation. A brother anguished by his sister's illness. A widow infatuated with a troubled young man.

Written with eloquence, grace and emotional generosity, the stories in this collection seek to understand people rather than to judge them, and invite us to reflect on the longings and regrets that make up who we are.

Midalia is a master of the short-story form, capturing profoundly familiar moments in strikingly accessible prose.

Susan Midalia is a writer and freelance editor who has come a long way since her childhood days of writing highly derivative stories in the Enid Blyton mode and poetry with very contrived rhyme schemes - she now has stories published in publications such as Salt and Wet Ink, and her first collection of short stories, A History of the Beanbag and other stories, was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards in 2007.

She studied at the University of Western Australia and at Cambridge University, holds a PhD in contemporary Australian women's fiction, and has taught literature at secondary and tertiary levels for over 30 years. Susan grew up in the Western Australian wheatbelt, and has lived in Perth (Claremont) for most of her adult life. She is married and has two adult sons who live in Melbourne.

An Unknown Sky and Other Stories
UWA Publishing
Author: Susan Midalia
ISBN: 9781742584270
Price: $24.95