Photo: Victoria Hannan
Photo: Victoria Hannan
Books
Text Publishing, 2019
A collection of short stories grappling with the aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires — grief, survival, and the slow return to ordinary life.
Find a copyPenguin Australia, 2027
A novel set in and around the rural horse racing industry. Forthcoming.
About
Alice Bishop grew up in Christmas Hills, Victoria, on Wurundjeri Country. Her debut book, A Constant Hum, is a collection of connected short stories about the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires and their aftermath. Published by Text Publishing in 2019, it won Alice the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelist award for 2020, and was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.
Her work has appeared in The Saturday Paper, Meanjin, Southerly, Australian Book Review, Griffith REVIEW, Overland, and reviewed in the New York Times, among others. She is a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow and holds a Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing from the University of Melbourne.
Her debut novel, Soft Bite — set in and around the rural horse racing industry — will be published by Penguin Australia in 2027. She is represented by Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown Australia.
Writing
Media
Some pieces are only a sentence or two, but even those snippets pack an emotional punch, and I found the varying story lengths built a sense of collective grief — and hope.
ReadTold mostly from the perspective of women, or concerning the lives of women, A Constant Hum shows Bishop's keen eye for observation.
ReadAlice Bishop's suite of short stories ranging in length from a few lines to 10 pages is a remarkable approach to the physical, emotional and spiritual impact of the Black Saturday fires.
Read