2023: Soak

This is the thirty-seventh volume of the UTS Writers’ Anthology series from the Writing and Publishing program at the University of Technology Sydney.

It continues the legacy of outstanding writing across fiction, non-fiction and poetry, ranging from the deeply moving to the laugh-out-loud funny and all the spaces in between.

For four decades, the UTS Anthology has fostered and celebrated writerly ambition. This new volume is steeped in it.

Beejay Silcox

Soak draws on authors from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. It reflects a variety of observations, concerns and desires that have come to the fore in our current climate and seeks to make sense of a rapidly changing world.

Drenched with a recurring motif of water, Soak ranges from calmly immersive to the precipice of overwhelming but offers the buoyancy of hope. From underwater waterslides to dogs in space, internal struggles to climbing mountains, it brims with ecocentrism, humour, creativity and resilience.

This year’s foreword is composed by celebrated writer and literary critic Beejay Silcox, whose cultural commentary and literary criticism regularly appears in national arts publications, and is increasingly finding an international audience. Her award-winning short stories have been published at home and abroad and have been selected for a number of Australian anthologies.

Soak is the product of immeasurable hard work and dedication from writers, the student-led Editorial Committee, UTS staff and the team at Brio Books.

Editing Committee Members

Lara Bezzina, Dominic Burke, Alexandra Gollan, Brenda Hartley and Rochelle Pickles.

Contributors

Yasmine Alwakal, Louise Alley, Caris Bizzaca, Jessica Best, Caileen Cachia, Anne Casey, Monique Choy, Pippi Cullinan, Laurie Geddes, Bronte Greer, Piece Hadjinicola, Brenda Hartley, Benjamin Keyworth, Hannah Kissel, Chitti Dasi Lardi, Linda Meyns, Phil Moore, Rochelle Pickles, Ave Redman, Georgina Reid, Emily Rodriguez, David Saunders, Sophie Katherine Serafim, Rose Tate, Esha Kaur Tiwana, Rafqa Touma and Vanessa Yenson.
 

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.