Category: 2017

Rose writes for children and adults. Her pieces have been published by The School Magazine, performed at Adelaide’s Quart Short reading nights and will appear in a microtext anthology by Medusa’s Laugh Press next year. A wanderer at heart, Rose currently resides in Brisbane with her favourite Antarctic souvenir (her…

Mary-Jane Duffy is an essayist and poet. She loves writing about art. In her spare time she is researching string theory and went this year to India to find out more about Tamil poetry. She recently adopted a donkey.   By Mary-Jane Easter story, Kilbirnie

Erin Donohue is a Wellington-based writer of young adult fiction and poetry. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Creative Writing) from Whitireia, and her work has previously been featured in They Call Me Ink: Re-draft 15 and 4th Floor. Her debut novel Because Everything Is Right but Everything Is…

Fiction-loving author Janet Colson gives us The fact alternative while deep into writing a follow-up thriller for her novel The Shark Party. Obsessed with art, the heart and polar bears, she once had a date with David Attenborough in Svalbard. They talked about the bodies of ballet dancers while eating…

Mary Cresswell was born early last century in a former province of Mexico, oldest child in a middle-class family. She graduated from Stanford University thanks to a huge variety of part-time jobs. Her favourite was being a soda jerk and her least favourite was modelling bathing suits for a sleazy…

This year’s journal includes prose and poetry about alternative facts, and process pieces, where 4th Floor contributors write their versions of the truth.   Rosemary Anderson Blood moon The shepherd’s wife   Vivienne Bailey Hope   Jane Blaikie Conditional Trump’s election week   Mary Cresswell Commemoration Shared custody   Janet Colson The…

Sue Jamieson   the damp soft ladders of morning potatoes ash-coated from the fire men who sleep under their women’s skirts birch-rafts poled through the silver marshes stepping storks pile twigs on top of towers the nest wide as a wheel, in wind and snow   Come here, little one,…

Rata Gordon   My eyes open and they chew on the light as if they are chewing on cornflakes. It gets mushy. I was looking at a deer in the trees in San Francisco. The deer was still there, but then I was thinking about my armpit hair and how…

Rata Gordon   dogs in pain on fresh cut grass chewing gum and tarseal in my belly button cars diving into cold water barbie dolls walking barefoot between peonies their plastic toes their stinking exhaust fumes they make the toilet dirty just like the rest of us a bottle top…

Darshi Ranmuthu   It has not been long enough for me to forget how I used to scamper through the paddy fields; how I scrambled up the mango tree in front of our house and swam in the snarling river with a pebbled bottom. It is not long enough yet…