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THIS ALL COME BACK NOW: The collective making of a blackfella speculative fiction anthology
THIS ALL COME BACK NOW is the world’s first anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction – written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, for blackfellas and about blackfellas. In these stories, ‘this all come back’: all those things that have been taken from us, that we collectively mourn the loss of, or attempt to recover and revive, as well as those that we thought we’d gotten rid of, that are always returning to haunt and hound us.
Some writers summon ancestral spirits from the past, while others look straight down the barrel of potential futures, which always end up curving back around to hold us from behind. Dazzling, imaginative and unsettling, THIS ALL COME BACK NOW centres and celebrates communities and culture. It’s a love letter to kin and country, to memory and future-thinking.
This critically acclaimed anthology was a collective undertaking, and editor Mykaela Saunders will discuss how she worked with others at each different stage of the project. From the first conception of the anthology through to publication and beyond, Mykaela has ensured that the project has been built from good relationality – the very stuff that all healthy communities are made of.
Mykaela Saunders
Mykaela Saunders is an award-winning Koori and Lebanese writer, teacher and community researcher, and the editor of the critically acclaimed THIS ALL COME BACK NOW, the world’s first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP).
Mykaela is a 2021 Next Chapter recipient, and her fiction, poetry, life writing and research have been widely published and won the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, the National Indigenous Story Award, the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize and the University of Sydney’s Sister Alison Bush Graduate Medal for Indigenous research.
Of Dharug descent, and working-class and queer, Mykaela belongs to the Tweed Goori community. Mykaela has worked in Aboriginal education in various capacities since 2003, and at the tertiary level since 2012. Her research explores her community’s past, present and future(s).