UTS

A warning, then, for anybody expecting this anthology to be simply a pretty bouquet: the blooms of short fiction—stories, plays, screenplays, poems—gathered here are not harmless, and thank goodness for that. Some are fetid or a little poisonous, unafraid of revealing their furry stems or filthy roots. Others are living things of desolate beauty and sadness, preoccupied with death and loss.

“If the aim of literature (as the aspiring author in Donald Barthelme’s classic story, ‘Florence Green Is 81’, believes) ‘is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart’—then here is literature, in all its furry, heartbreaking strangeness.”

From Ceridwen Dovey’s foreword to the 2015 UTS Writers’ Anthology, Strange Objects Covered With Fur.

Strange Objects Covered With Fur is the twenty-ninth collection from the writing program at the University of Technology, Sydney. It showcases fiction, non-fiction, scriptwriting and poetry from some of Australia’s most striking young voices.

This year’s anthology is dedicated to Martin Harrison. It features a foreword by Ceridwen Dovey, whose novels Blood Kin and Only The Animals have received critical acclaim worldwide.