Tag: non-fiction

  • The Rice Barn Is Now Empty: Practices of Stealing and Divorcing Women in Lombok

    The Rice Barn Is Now Empty: Practices of Stealing and Divorcing Women in Lombok

    The Rice Barn Is Now Empty by Macquarie University student Kavita Bedford is the winner of the Editors’ Choice prize in the Tharunka Non-Fiction Writing Competition 2012. The taxi driver laughed again, showing all his teeth. “Yes. Just one month ago I helped my friend Janedi* kidnap his wife”. “Sorry, what do you mean kidnap?”…

  • A Man Like Luai

    A Man Like Luai

    A Man Like Luai by University of Melbourne student Ellena Savage is the winner of the Tharunka Non-Fiction Writing Competition 2012. Tharunka would like to thank the judges Lisa Pryor, Jason Whittaker and Matthew Thompson. It is May, 2009. A cold, clear night; frost will set over the tips of lawns before dawn. I wait…

  • The Minister’s Treehouse: Plastic Bags Full Of Water You Can Touch But Not Drink

    In the United States alone there are 75,440 km of highways, which distance is almost twice the circumference of the globe. At the crossroads of the highways to Middle and Eastern, between Knoxville and Nashville, is the fittingly named Crossville, Tennessee. Crossville’s population are some 8,981 persons, of whom 97.03% are white; the median income…

  • Do You Have Emotions? Strange Them

    The title is a reference both to Saul Bellow’s satirisation of Ernest Hemingway’s prose style and a few days I spent in Melbourne. Everything is as I remember it. It was a most tactile tooth brushing experience. The glow of the lights strung across the mirror. An anticipation, a twinkling. She, at her most majestic,…