Short Stories
A growing archive of short stories that live in the moments between memory and myth, realism and the uncanny, the moments something changes and the moment just before.
This is a space for voices that linger. For work that doesn’t rush to resolution.For stories that unravel carefully, beautifully, and sometimes painfully.
All the Moments I Still Live In was awarded Third Place in the 2025 Furphy Literary Award (Open Category), one of Australia’s most respected short story prizes.
The story follows Maria, an elderly Maltese-Australian woman drifting between fragments of memory and present reality as dementia erodes the borders of her life. Moving fluidly through time, the story spans wartime Malta, migration to suburban Melbourne, motherhood, loss, and the disorienting tenderness of her final days. Through Maria’s looping recollections, crocheted tablecloths, burnt tea, yellow roses, and the radio’s hum, the story traces how love, faith, and identity persist even as memory fades. It is both an elegy for an ordinary life and a quiet celebration of endurance, connection, and the ghosts that remain stitched through us.
Competition Judge, and esteemed Publisher, John Kerr wrote: “The author opens by taking us straight into Maria’s now, her present, and then — almost imperceptibly — into moments Maria still lives in. ‘Imperceptibly’ is a sin in a writer, a negation of duty to a reader. The author’s handling of this is masterful.”