Jane Rawson

My short story, We saw the same sky, published in the current Overland, is now online and free to read. I wrote the first draft of this story in response to a story prompt provided by the gorgeous small publisher, Tiny Owl Workshop. They were sourcing stories for an anthology, Unfettered (which I believe will be published soon), based on illustrations by Terry Whidborne (including the one I used, ‘Swallows‘). It was also a response to a report that claimed then-immigration minister Scott Morrison had told asylum seekers on Manus that “even in your dreams, you are not going to make it to Australia“. Oh yeah, ScoMo, I thought: how exactly are you going to stop them dreaming about Australia? Anyway, the result was We saw the same sky. Thank you to Jen Mills for doing such a great job editing and improving it and to Overland for publishing it. (And while you’re there you should read Wayne Macauley’s kick-arse story, A comment about free market forces.)

Update this issue of Overland was reviewed by ArtsHub, who had this to say about We saw the same sky

Jane Rawson’s terrifying short story We Saw the Same Sky is perhaps the most daring work in this collection.  A work of magical realism which interrogates the repression of asylum seekers, Rawson creates a dark fantasy that settles on the soul like the taloned monsters she conjures.

The finest works of horror are not those that create monsters but those that show us the monsters we are already becoming.  Rawson’s leap of imagination delivers a gut punch to contemporary asylum seeker policy of tremendous power and originality.