Love & Other Rituals
We are so excited to announce our newest release, Love & Other Rituals by Monica Macansantos!
A man imprisoned by taboo learns the price of love. A child visits the grave of a cousin she’s never met; another absorbs the fallout of her parents’ divorce. Friendships rupture beyond repair, and family members collide when it comes to caring for their ageing father.
These vivid stories of yearning, loneliness and resilience navigate the naivety of childhood, the complications of young adulthood and the politics of marriage.
Monica Macansantos is a powerful new voice bringing us the raw and darkly beautiful perspectives of characters lost both in and out of their homeland, the Philippines.
US Edition: Coming Soon!
‘I loved these beautiful stories by Monica Macansantos, who writes with such beauty and delicacy about desire, home, longing, loneliness, duty and hope — that is, what it means to be human. Every story is terrific, different, surprising. I can’t wait to see what she does next.’ Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum, Bowlaway, The Giant’s Museum and Thunderstruck & Other Stories.
We spoke with Monica Macansantos ahead of Love and Other Rituals’s release, discussing alienation, her writing process and influences, and her late father.
Grattan Street Press: Is this a collection of your favourite stories or did you specifically consider how these eight stories came together?
Monica Macansantos: With Maricel I was trying to do something different, trying to step out of my social class because I’m a very privileged middle-class Filipino with very educated parents. And I just wanted to do something different; I wanted to write about a young woman like me but someone who was much less privileged. It was very loosely based on a friendship I had with a girl who I met in elementary school who had a rough family life, and I wanted to sort of get into her shoes.
I wrote most of these stories when I was living away from home. The Autumn Sun I wrote when I was living in Manilla but I was recalling my childhood in Delaware, so I was missing another home. It wasn’t really intentional, but when I wrote it I felt like I was returning to some sense of home…
Read the rest of the interview with Monica, here.
Details:
RRP: $29.99 (incl GST)
Format: PB
ISBN: 9780645481310
Release Date: 16 September, 2022
Intermissions
Intermissions is an anthology of over 60 original short stories, exploring the complexity of the human condition.
The collection brings together musings on love and loss, experimentation, isolation, suffering, intimacy and connection, environmental collapse and the Anthropocene.
Carefully curated by Grattan Street Press, this eclectic selection of stories from both Australian and international writers is haunting, uplifting, moving and absurd. We invite you to traverse its
pages to discover the diversity of voices reflective of an ever-changing world.
Meet some of the authors!
Details:
RRP: $29.99 (incl GST)
Format: PB
Extent: 276pp
ISBN: 9780648209669
Release Date: 11 November, 2021
This Is Us Now
Love in the Time of Cancer
We are very excited to announce our newest release, This Is Us Now by Jacinta Dietrich! The launch of this book was sold out with more than 100 people attending. In bookstores from 21 June 2021, This is Us Now is the story of two young people navigating a relationship in the most extraordinary circumstances.
Ella and Theo’s relationship is young and evolving and so are they. Their lives are going mostly to plan until a sudden cancer diagnosis changes everything. Nerves about meeting each other’s parents and living together turn to anxieties about survival. Easy becomes hard. Hard becomes impossible. Their lives cannot remain the same and now every moment is coloured by illness and the challenges that come with it.
They’re faced with the hardest decision: when you feel like you are losing someone you love, do you hold on or do you let go forever?
Ebook: Coming Soon!
When did you begin writing This is Us Now?
I started it during my Master’s degree as part of my Master’s project. It was only a couple of months after my partner finished chemotherapy. Since it was so fresh in my mind, I just decided to write it all down.
Can you elaborate further on the inspiration behind the novel?
Sure. During my partner’s treatment, I read a lot of books about cancer but none of them had a story that resembled ours. It felt like there were only three types of illness narratives….
Read the rest of the interview with Jacinta, here.
Details:
RRP: $22.99 (incl GST)
Format: PB
Extent: 120pp
ISBN: 9780648209652
Release Date: 21 June 2021
Welcome to Bellevue
Grattan Street Press is thrilled to announce the release of Welcome to Bellevue, a compelling fantasy action and adventure story by Seth Robinson. The e-book is available on Amazon and Kobo and you can now buy the physical copy here.
The hero of Welcome to Bellevue awakes on a ferry with no memory of how he came to be there. The boat is bound for Bellevue, a place he has never heard of – a place that proves very difficult to leave.
Seth Robinson is an American-Australian author based in Melbourne. Seth retains his American twang and love of pine trees, something that contributed to the setting of Welcome to Bellevue, his debut novel.
Details:
RRP: $24.95 (incl GST)
Format: PB
Extent: 286pp
ISBN: 9780648209638
Release Date: 15 October 2020