In writing this book over several years, I have accrued many debts. Firstly, I owe deep gratitude to Alaina Gougoulis, Daisy Parente, Philip Gwyn Jones, Melinda Harvey, Jean Edelstein, and everyone at Text and Scribe UK, without whom a blueberry would just be a delicious, if costly, fruit. Heartfelt thanks to my friends who read and advised me: Dion Kagan, Maria Tumarkin, Ronnie Scott and Timothy Chandler.
I have referenced (stolen gratuitously from?) conversations, encounters and experiences with friends and strangers in this text. Credit here is due to Daniel Wright (RIP), Zübeyda Ahmed, Nader Ruhayel, Shasta Fisher, Natalie Costanzo, Natalie Briggs, Auntie Annie, Bhakthi Puvanenthiran, André Dao, Cat McInnis, Otto Ivor, Ambika Trasi, Ahmed Awadalla, Yahia Saleh, Sammy Dunstan, Emma McNicol, Gene Flenady, Annabelle Stapleton-Crittenden, Tim Chandler (again), Stevie aka Robyn Delacroix, John Olstad, Detective Cristina Sereña, St Catherine of Bologna (RIP), Marianne Hirsch, Hans Ruin and a few men with names that remind me of ‘Sam’. Others, too, whose names I don’t remember.
Friends, colleagues and reference-letter writers who assisted this work in kind and sometimes abstract ways are Stephanie Van Schilt, Becky Harkins-Cross, Elena Gomez, Sam Cooney, Amy Gray, Eloise Grills, Oliver Reeson, Leah Jing, Adam Curley, Bronte Coates, Chris Somerville, Laura McPhee-Browne, Jen Nguyen, Rita Bullwinkel, Jessie Cole, Kate Callingham, Helen Garner, Robert Watkins, readers and subscribers of Little Throbs, and supporters of Synthetic Heat. Big thanks to Annabel Brady-Brown and Zoe Dzunko at the Lifted Brow, Sophie Allan at Chart Collective, Natalie Eilbert and Emily Raw at the Atlas Review, and Louise Swinn, editor of Choice Words.
My life and curiosity are the products of love and labour freely given by Mum, Dad, Jim, Rob, Sue and Emi. I composed parts of this text on unceded Wurundjeri land and I pay my respects to its rightful, traditional owners. I consumed groceries and paid bills while writing this with the material assistance of, variously, Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria and an Australian Postgraduate Award. Romance and domestic collaboration was provided by Dominic Amerena, to whom I dedicate this book.