My short story ‘Street Blessings’ is live here at White Enso, a journal of literary, contextual and visual art inspired by Japan (oh and it won their fiction award for this issue so there’s that…). ‘Street Blessings’ is speculative fiction memoir, it’s super personal and was kinda terrifying to write…but weirdly I’m excited to get it out there, share it, and talk more about that time in my life.

When the wonderful Tehani of FableCroft Publishing asked me to write a story for her first anthology in, like, forever, of course I was going to say yes. I love FableCroft and everything she’s done — including publishing my first short story collection Bone Chime Song and Other Stories. Tehani is a great editor and all-round amazing human!

The Art of Being Human was born out 2020 and all the shit that brought with it, but is a celebration of art and hope. My contribution, ‘Birdsong’, is a story about the lasting power of imaginary worlds, and was inspired by Ellis Rowan. Ellis lived from 1848 to 1922 and was an incredible artist and woman who defied expectations and social pressures in the pursuit of her craft — including travelling to New Guinea in 1916 at the age of almost 70 (!) to paint birds of paradise. This is the story I have reimagined in ‘Birdsong’. You can learn a bit more about her here.

The Art of Being Human Kickstarter is up and going great guns. I’m so thrilled to be a part of something dedicated to bringing light to dark times.

It’s so exciting to see The Art of Broken Things out in the big wide world.

Thank you to Elizabeth from ‘Nerds of a Feather’ for this lovely, thoughtful review

‘A new collection of short stories from one of Australia’s hidden treasures will break your heart and mend it back together with gold‘

In particular, this quote:

“One of the delightful things about collections is that they make the preoccupations of the author wonderfully clear. This is most certainly true of The Art of Broken Things. Many of the characters in these stories are outsiders, some literally living on the outskirts of town, others simply strangers in a foreign culture. They are people facing grief or toxic relationships, people who are desperate and despairing.”

Sometimes, as a writer, you don’t realise you’re doing this very thing – exploring stuff that’s going down in your real life through fiction. This might be doubly true when you’re a speculative fiction writer like me. Sometimes a story about a spacewalk is a story about a spacewalk. Sometimes, it’s me, dealing with the way my marriage and very long term relationship ended. A lot of the time we do this subconsciously, and it’s only when putting a collection together – even seeing a review of said collection – that we realise.

“Few things are more enjoyable or disturbing than a Joanne Anderton story. They feel like reality with the gravity turned off and, freed from those surly bonds, you float. But beware: broken things lurk in the darkness of space, earth, sea – and they’re hungry.” — Angela Slatter, award-winning author of All the Murmuring Bones

A marriage dissolves in the middle of a spacewalk…

A lonely robot searches for the remains of a long-lost child…

An empty nester is haunted by victims of the bushfires that surround her home…

These are tales of breaking and rebuilding, falling apart and being put back together.

The stories in The Art of Broken Things blur the line between genres to explore some of our deepest, most fundamentally human concerns: what does it mean to build a family? And what are we willing to sacrifice, to keep that family together?

From multiple award-winning author Joanne Anderton comes a new collection of dark science fiction, horror and weird.

Available now from Trepidatio Publishing!

“Joanne Anderton is a master of the uncanny. Each of her stories is like a torch shone into the dark crevices of the imagination, and you may not always like what they reveal: terror, wonder, and a strange, dark beauty. Highly recommended.” — Helen Marshall, author of The Migration

“Joanne Anderton’s stories are deeply atmospheric and powerfully engage the heart and the mind. She imagines futures both dark and entirely too possible, with characters you will come to know intimately. One of this generation’s most talented writers, this collection showcases an author firing on all cylinders.” — Alan Baxter, author of The Gulp and Devouring Dark

New Book!

Just in time for Halloween comes ‘Inanimates: Tales of Everyday Fear’

Inanimates finds the terrifying in the everyday, bringing together seven stories where ordinary objects become the source of nightmares and extraordinary threat. 

In “Thread Embrace,” a well-dressed killer finds himself at the mercy of an unexpectedly sartorial threat. “Simulation Theory” sees a wounded soldier bonds with the bomb disposal robot he worked with in the field. In the heartbreaking last story, “High Density”, the comfortable suburban ideal of a retired couple becomes a war against a dark and dangerous form of urban renewal.

In turns wicked, delightful, horrifying, and fantastic, Inanimates: Tales of Everyday Fear showcases a hidden gem of the Australian genre scene, and highlights Anderton’s ability to see the dark, supernatural threats inherent in ordinary things.

Available HERE from Brain Jar Press!