The Joy of writing Short Stories with Strong Characters: Saying more with Less with Laura Jean McKay, Laura Elvery and Kristina Olsson. Introduction by Mayor Rosanna Natoli
Eumundi Writers Festival 2026 Award Recitals: With judges Sue McPherson, Kári Gíslason, Laura Jean McKay and special guest Professor Roly Sussex - Book for FREE
WINNER OF THE 2021 VICTORIAN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE 2021 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PRIZE FOR FICTION
A SLATE AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
WINNER OF THE 2021 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD
Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.
Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.
As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals — first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean’s infected son, Lee. When he takes off with Kimberly, heading south, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin.
Setting off on their trail, with Sue the dingo riding shotgun, they find themselves in a stark, strange world in which the animal apocalypse has only further isolated people from other species. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.
The brilliant new short story collection from the Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning author of The Animals in That Country.
A family of cat farmers gets the chance to set the felines free. A group of chickens tells it like it is. A female-crewed ship ploughs through the patriarchy. A support group finds solace in a world without men.
With her trademark humour, energy, and flair, McKay offers glimpses of places where dreams subsume reality, where childhood restarts, where humans embrace their animal selves and animals talk like humans.
The stories in Gunflower explode and bloom in mesmerising ways, showing the world both as it is and as it could be.
Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country — winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, and the ABIA Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year, and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. The French translation, Les Animaux de ce pays, won the 2025 Prix Gargantua. Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia, and her latest collection is Gunflower. She was the 2025 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland, and teaches Creative Writing at Massey University. Laura is based in Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia.
