Tony Birch has an eye for life lived at the margins and in Father’s Day he brings the streets of the inner-city to life with compassion and dry humour. But he also focus on the relationships that connect us all, particularly the emotional lives of fathers and sons. In subtle, understated prose touched with poetry, this new collection of stories cuts deep into the minor joys and tragedies of ordinary Australians.
Tony Birch is the author of three novels: The White Girl, winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing, and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Prize; Ghost River, winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2012. He is also the author of Shadowboxing, and four short story collections: Father’s Day, The Promise, Common People and Dark as Last Night, which won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Award Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction, was shortlisted for the 2022 ABA Booksellers Choice Awards: Nielsen Adult Fiction Book of the Year, and was longlisted for the 2022 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award. He has published two poetry collections: Broken Teeth and Whisper Songs, which was also longlisted for the 2022 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award. In 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award. Tony Birch is also an activist, historian and essayist.
Photo courtesy of Hunter Publishers
Father’s Day is a book with emotion, but not cloying sentiment; it offers sharp observation coupled with empathy. Above all, it is uniquely Australian.
Sunday AgeAuthor Tony Birch
Publisher Hunter Publishers
Date of Publication 2009
ISBN 9780980517972
Category Short Stories
5475857
192
