Joan Smokes

Angela Meyer is an exciting new talent. Her short stories have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Island, The Big Issue, The Australian, The Lifted Brow and Killings. By day she works as a commissioning editor for Echo, an imprint of Bonnier Publishing Australia, where she has discovered a number of authors, most notably Heather Morris and her runaway bestseller, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

WINNER: MSLEXIA NOVELLA AWARD, 2019; 'There is so much to admire in Joan Smokes - the winning entry of the inaugural Mslexia Novella Competition. Its pared-back brittle language is as stark as the Nevada landscape. It's a sophisticated piece of writing, in which the author pushes at the boundaries of language and form; anguish and suffering are evoked at every turn, in thwarted rhythms and rough syntax. But the real magic is in how the author puts the reader so surely in the protagonist's shoes. It feels like a cliche to say that good writing should "suck you into another psyche" as Barbara Kingsolver puts it, but empathy is what we all need more of, especially now. As an act of empathy, as well as a beautifully rendered work of literature, Joan Smokes shines.' Eloise Millar, Mslexia judge