New Releases

If we do not remember our childhoods do they still exist?

Shifting is the true story of two children growing up in in the aftermath of the Second World War. It is a collaborative autobiography, told from a male and female perspective. Attracted like a law of nature, Serge, a boy born in northern Italy and Helen, a girl born in Australia are inextricably drawn to each other in a changing world. A social history of the west of Melbourne in the 1950s-1960s, it is also a unique love story.

Breaking up is easy. Anyone can do it. It’s what happens next that’s hard, as thirty-something slacker, Bill Mason, finds out after he quits both his job and his girlfriend, Georgie, in one impulsive afternoon. As the consequences of his actions catch up with him Bill finds himself caught between manhood and mousedom.

Can he answer the big questions? Does he have what it takes to change, to find new love with Amberley, or will he continue to view his life through pizza-tinted glasses? Should he buy a new washing machine, or 500 pairs of cheap underpants? Is it ever OK to use a friend’s toothbrush to clean dog do off your shoe?This brilliant debut is the darkly humorous tale of one man's battle to be just that: a man.

Love and care are key themes in a new book on the glory box tradition of Melbourne's Coptic women. The book has its origins in The Glory Box Project, a collaboration between Brimbank City Council’s Hunt Club Community Arts Centre, the Coptic Women’s Association and Victoria University, and funded by Arts Victoria.

The authors, Victoria University researchers Professor Marty Grace and Dr Enza Gandolfo, worked with the women during the project to understand their desire to maintain the glory box tradition. The book documents and communicates the women’s stories of their connection to the glory box and associated customs and rituals, to craft and craftmaking and to links between old traditions in their countries of origin and contemporary life in Australia.

Michael Hyde spent the sixties opposing Australian and US involvement in the Vietnam War – a conflict at the heart of that turbulent decade. As opposition to the war grew exponentially, tens of thousands of young people took up the fight against it and the social ills of racism, poverty and inequality.

Michael’s personal journey from Christian pacifist to student revolutionary was as wild as the sixties itself. Trips to the Cultural Revolution in China and to Cambodia to meet the Viet Cong, breaking the law, demonstrations, arrests, living on the run, communal houses, music, drugs and sexual liberation were all part of the rollercoaster of rebellion.

The young radicals wanted to make the world a better place and they weren’t about to be deterred. This is one of the first stories of that era reported through the eyes of someone right in the thick of it, someone who lived every moment of the Sixties, someone who was there and who remembers.

Eric Judd is 39 and his girlfriend wants him to give up playing football. Eric (aka Mr Cleansheets) is a goalkeeping legend at his amateur Sydney club because in his youth he received a letter inviting him to trial with Manchester United. The letter said to “come when you’re ready” – and six days before his 40th birthday, Eric is finally ready.

Inspired by the dying wish of his Uncle Jimmy, Eric travels to England, but does not quite receive the welcome he had hoped for. Instead, he encounters all manner of villains: murderous football hooligans, Irish mafia, dodgy football agents, beautiful pop stars, international terrorists and a range of supporting players with any number of overt and hidden agendas.

He also plays football.

Feral Tracks captivated teenagers when first released in 1998, including reluctant male readers. It was short-listed for a readers' choice award and optioned for a feature film. The screenplay was created in 2002 and, although not produced as a movie, inspired this newly rewritten version of the story.

Feral Tracks: the novel adapted from the screenplay has transformed the travelogue style of the first publication into a more tightly structured story format for a fresh readership.

The Asia Pacific region is vast, with half the world’s population, and arguably the greatest diversity of cultures on earth. It encompasses vast land areas with dense populations, and a vast water area, with smaller scattered populations.

Throughout the region, social work is in various stages of maturity as an academic discipline and a profession. This book brings to life the experiences of its social work educators: describing the challenges of social work education in Australia, Burma, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, Korea, Nepal, New Zealand and the Philippines; arguing that international social work belongs in the core curriculum of every social work education programme.

Social work educators will find this volume useful, not only for their students, but to remind themselves of their international context. Such an international perspective is the next step in the remarkable evolution of social work: from the 19th century urban slums to networking for justice in the contemporary world.

Sandy Jeffs grows up in an Australian country town in the 1950s and 60s, domestic violence ripping her family to shreds. As a student in the 1970s she comes to terms with her sexuality as part of an alternative family. With the onset of schizophrenia at age 23 Sandy’s world falls apart.

Flying with Paper Wings offers privileged insights into madness – medical, social, personal – as well as disturbing reflections on its causes and its care. It is also a story of how poetry can become a personal saviour in the face of nearly irresistible forces.

Bruising is the story of Merz’s long love affair with the art of boxing - from throwing and receiving her first punches - to competing in an Australian amateur title fight and beyond. Boxing opens her to new ideas about what it means to be a woman, it tests her courage as well as her physical limitations and connects her with others in unexpected ways. It provides her with the thrilling and often hilarious background against which to examine myths about feminine virtue and physical weakness.

Bruising, which was short listed for the Dobbie Award in 2001, and this latest edition is updated with new material based on a trip to New York where Merz spent time training with the women at one of America’s oldest and most famous boxing gyms.

This book is has its origins in the The Everyday Creativity of Women Craftmakers, a narrative research project exploring the roles and meanings of craftmaking in women’s lives. This research aims to document and communicate contemporary women’s stories of their engagement with craftwork; and to explore the links that women perceive between their engagement in craftmaking and their wellbeing. The research was funded by Victoria University and Spotlight Pty Ltd, a large Australian retailer of fabrics, wool and craft supplies.

In the book we explore the meaning of craft and craftmaking to women and the key themes that have emerged from the research including: creative and self expression, wellbeing, community and intergenerational links and pleasure and passion for the craft itself. There are 15 individual women and one group highlighted in the book with images of their craftwork and their stories and ideas about the meaning of craft to them.