by Carmel Bird
‘Maytime Fair’
The Common Rat, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1993
‘Reptile Girl’
Blasters, edited by Andrew Griffiths, Reed Books, 1996
‘The Isolation of the Deciding Factor’
Forever Shores, edited by Peter McNamara and Margaret Winch,
Wakefield Press, 2003
‘The Sea is Going to France’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No. 11, 1985
‘The Golden Earring of Hepzibah-May Mull’
Millennium, edited by Helen Daniel, Penguin Books, 1991
‘What World is This?’
Best Stories Under the Sun, edited by Michael Wilding and
David Myers, Central Queensland University Press, 2004
‘The Woodpecker Toy Fact’
The Woodpecker Toy Fact, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1987
‘The Common Rat’
Grand Street, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1989
‘The Cricketers’ Arms’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No. 34, 1991
‘Flick’
Australian Short Stories, Pascoe Publishing, No. 37, 1992
‘Red Letters’
Phoenix Review Nos. 7/8, 1992
‘P. D. Hepworth, Architect’
Meanjin, Vol. 52 No. 3, 1992
‘Henry Lawson’s Chromosome’
The Common Rat, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1993
‘Soldier of the Round Valleys’
The Common Rat, by Carmel Bird, McPhee Gribble, 1993
About the Author
Carmel Bird is fascinated by the power of memory and by the capacity of apparently ordinary scenes, incidents and sensations to trigger it into life. She loves the truth-telling power of fiction and its ability to mine and represent the past perhaps more effectively than is possible with the singleminded pursuit of documentary fact.
As she has commented in an article titled ‘Fact or Fiction’: ‘Life is a crude inventor; fiction will only be convincing if it is more artful than life.’ She has also described herself as ‘interested in the play between fact and fiction, interested in the moment when the metamorphosis takes place, when the grub of fact becomes the butterfly of fiction’.
Carmel’s novels include Red Shoes, The White Garden and The Bluebird Café, all of which were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Her latest novel, Cape Grimm, was published by Harper Collins in 2004. Carmel has published several volumes of short stories and two guides to writing fiction: Dear Writer and Not Now, Jack—I’m Writing a Novel. She has also edited several anthologies including The Penguin Century of Australian Stories and The Stolen Children—Their Stories.
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Other Books By Carmel Bird
Cape Grimm.
Open for Inspection
Red Shoes
The White Garden
Unholy Writ
Crisis
The Bluebird Café
Cherry Ripe
The Common Rat
Woodpecker Point
Automatic Teller
Births, Deaths & Marriages
Dear Writer
Not Now, Jack—I’m Writing a Novel
Daughters and Fathers
The Stolen Children—Their Stories
The Penguin Century of Australian Stories
Red Hot Notes
The Mouth
Cassowary’s Quiz
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 2005
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Limited
ABN 36 0009 913 517
A member of the HarperCollinsPublishers (Australia) Pty Limited Group
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Carmel Bird 2005
The right of Carmel Bird to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Bird, Carmel.
The essential bird.
ISBN: 0 7322 6991 1 (pbk.).
ISBN: 978-0-730-49114-9 (ePub)
I. Title.
A823.3
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
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Canada
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
* ‘Upon a gloomy night, with all my cares to loving ardours flushed.’ St John of the Cross, translation by Roy Campbell, Penguin Classics, 1960.