A tribute to what it is like to live in the Centre in new and strange times. This important book is very much the potent messenger for our times from the writers who are searching for the words to the stories from their hearts, and I have found there is much to think about from reading these marvelous stories and poems. 

In this great, sacred landscape the country is speaking through all of these many different voices and surely demonstrates how the land ofthe ancestors and its people continues to shape and help grow a sense ofmaturity and strength in the literature that comes from those livingclose to this land.

'Fishtails in the dust is the assured measure in the scales of weighing the tender, forthright and ambiguous state of our humanity in Australia today. Read it well, and treasure the great love to be found in this strong and beautiful literature from the people who work, liveand write in Central Australia'. Alexis Wright

Edited by Janet Hutchinson