Grief, loss, pain, love, and the future - an achingly human debut short story collection, from the winner of the 2019 Richell Prize.
'Thrilling, prescient, and deeply moving ... an electrifying new voice in Australian fiction.' Emily Bitto
'clear eyes, sharp intellect and deep sorrow - both lament and protest song.' Kate Mildenhall
'An exquisite elegy for the world we know, and the world we know is to come ... delicate, precise and heartbreaking.' Briohny Doyle
'A funny, tough, restless author for our times ... intimate, surprising and sly.' Ronnie Scott
'Suffused with sensuality, riven with loss.' Rose Michael
'A fireworks show of bursting ideas. The strength of this book is more than its beautiful prose, characterisation and concept: here is an emerging writer who has captured the heart of humanity in crisis with such insight that it feels like a revelation.' Richell Prize Judges, awarding Everything Feels Like the End of the World the 2019 prize
Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a collection of short speculative fiction exploring possible futures from an Australia not so different from our present day to one thousands of years into an unrecognisable future.
At the heart of each story is the anchor of what it means to be human: grief, loss, pain and love. A young woman is faced with a terrible choice about her pregnancy in a community ravaged by doubt. An engineer working on a solar shield protecting the Earth shares memories of their lover with an AI companion. Two archivists must decide what is worth saving when the world is flooded by rising sea levels. In a heavily policed state that preferences the human and punishes the different, a mother gives herself up to save her transgenic child.
These transformative stories are both epic and granular, and forever astonishing in their imaginative detail, sense of revelation and emotional connection. They herald the arrival of a stunning new voice.
About the Author
Else Fitzgerald is a Melbourne-based writer. Her writing has appeared in various publications including Australian Book Review, Meanjin, The Guardian, The Suburban Review and Award Winning Australian Writing. Her work has been recognised in awards including the Grace Marion Wilson Prize, the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Awards, the Fair Australia Prize, the VU Overland Short Story Prize and the Margaret River Short Story Award.
In 2017 Else was a WrICE (Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange Program) Emerging Writer Fellow, participating in residencies in the Philippines and Melbourne. In 2018 she received a VicArts grant from Creative Victoria to work on her collection of short speculative fiction, Nearly Curtains, which explores landscapes, language and technology and the ways they may shift and alter in a radically changing world. Nearly Curtains won the 2019 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers.
Find Else at elsefitzgerald.com
