The 66th issue of ‘The Griffith Review’, The Light Ascending, features the winners of The Novella Project VII, Julienne van Loon, Mirandi Riwoe, Keren Heenan and Allanah Hunt, chosen by a judging panel of Maxine Beneba Clarke, Aviva Tuffield and Holden Sheppard. The four authors share the $25 000 prize, provided by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. Due to the length of the novellas, this edition remains mostly in the realm of short fiction and poetry, with a slice of memoir from 2019 Griffith Review Fellow Krissy Kneen.

The Light Ascending also features new work from Holly Ringland, who captured imaginations globally with her ABIA-winning novel The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart in 2018. Ringland delivers on some eerie magic realism in her new short story ‘The Market Seller’, which takes place at a weekend farmer’s markets in a small seaside town, where an old woman quietly sets up shop and begins selling small cellophaned candies to a quickly growing crowd. That night, the townsfolk dream feverish, disturbed dreams. It is an uncanny delight.

Another stand out of the collection was ‘Annah the Javanese’ by Mirandi Riwoe, author of Stella-winning novella The Fish Girl and the ‘Heloise Chancey’ mysteries. One of the four Novella Project winners, Riwoe imagines the life of a model who featured in one of Paul Gauguin’s most famous canvasses, representing 19th-century Paris through the eyes of a woman of colour, fighting to survive.

The remaining stories and poems traverse genre and form, culture and continent, from writers Pat Hoffie, Laura Taylor, Keren Heenan, Shastra Deo and others, in what is a vibrant and impressive cross section of modern Australian writing.

Reviewed by Emma Harvey