Catchfire Press

Deadline extension for Animal Encounters

catchfire — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:55:49 +0000

The Catchfire Press committee has decided to extend the prose and poetry competition deadline for ‘Animal Encounters’ to March 31st, 2012.

New Competition for prose and poetry – Animal Encounters

catchfire — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:55:34 +0000

Catchfire Press is pleased to announce a new competition for prose and poetry.

ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS

Hardworking farm animals, pampered pets, beautuful birds, biting bull ants, pesky possums or slithering snakes all have a story to tell. We want your poem, article or story about animals large or small. Tell us about your favourite feline or rats in the roof. Your entry can be happy or sad, factual or fictional but it must at least be about a non-human animal. (People can be in it too.)

Send your stories and poems, fact or fiction, about animals in your life or any other encounter you have had with them to the competition. Catchfire press invites you to write for possible inclusion in ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS in the following categories:
* Prose (200 – 2500 line limit)
* Poetry (up to 100 words)

In each category:
First Place – $300
Second Place – $200
Commendations will be awarded

Send in your entries by 31st March 2012 with entry fee of $10 per entry and completed entry form to ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS, Catchfire Press, PO Box 2101, DANGAR, NSW, 2309

Download an entry form click here

People of the Valley

Catchfire — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:29:30 +0000

OUR MOST RECENT PUBLICATION – SELLING NOW!
From ballerinas to boxers, the famous to humble heroes, this book tells of many who have helped make this valley a vibrant, stimulating community. Rich or poor, soldiers, sailors, teachers, clergy, convicts, doctors, nurses and the couple next door, all these and many more are the People of the Valley.

These stories and poems explore the variety of figures, past and present, who have come to make the Hunter Valley the place it is today. There are stories about descendants of the original inhabitants trying to live in a changing world, also of modern migrants struggling to adapt.

The writers are a diverse group both young and old, some in print for the first time, others well known names, including Sharyn Munro, Gail Hennessy, Jan Dean, Greg Ray, Jean Kent, Patrick Cullen and Zeny Giles.

From the Earth to the Table

Catchfire — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:22:41 +0000

‘From the Earth to the Table’ (2008)
by Marion Halligan, Zeny Giles, Craig Manhood, Andrew Slattery and many more local Hunter Writers.

From the Earth to the Table is a collection of poems, stories, recipes and articles about beautiful food grown and produced locally. Authors unearth memories of taste and smell, and share their favourite seasonal recipes and tips about sustainable living. From the simple act of picking home-grown olives to working in a community garden or revisiting the first taste of a watermelon in summer, this book is about the people who live in the Hunter Valley and their passion for food.

From the Earth to the Table was produced with the support of a grant from the Newcastle City Council’s Community Assistance Program

ISBN: 978 0 9757926 3 6
90 pages
Cost: $20

Through the Valley

Catchfire — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:28:01 +0000

* SOLD OUT

‘Through the Valley: Writings from the Hunter’ (2007)
Donald Cohen, Michael Jameson, Jo Tregellis (eds)

Through the Valley presents poems, stories, memoirs and images spanning almost two centuries of Hunter Valley life.

Experienced authors and new contributors highlight the unique and the universal, from the female artists of colonial Newcastle to a Lake Macquarie childhood between the world wars, from the modern cityscape and busy working harbour to ballooning and skywatching in the upper Hunter. Through the Valley explores this key Australian region with a multiplicity of voices including Les Murray, Patrice Newell, Jan Dean, Jean Kent and Julian Croft.

ISBN: 978 0 9757926 2 9
288 pages

Stories for a Long Summer

Catchfire — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 01:37:06 +0000

‘Stories for a Long Summer’ (2006)
by Col Maybury, Andrew Slattery, Wendy Alexander, the winners of the SFLS Student competition and many more local Hunter Writers.

“With its combination of poetry, fiction and memoir, Catchfire Press’s latest offering Stories for a Long Summer not only conjures up all of the things that make for a great summer—Christmas and cicadas, sunsets and storms—but it also proves, like summer itself, to be well worth the wait.” — Patrick Cullen, award winning Newcastle writer.

Full of warmth, laughter, sadness and hope, Stories for a Long summer is a book that celebrates the stories and poems that Australian summers birth. In it we have compiled a collection of writings that give the reader a place to escape from the summer heat. You can travel to the arctic and play with the penguins, or travel across the Stockton ferry. You can go back in time to a perilous journey in Broken Hill, and go forward in time to an orwelian future. And of course, you can share the cheers and jeers of christmas memories. No matter where you may go this summer it is the perfect companion for any summer adventure.

ISBN: 0 9757926 1 X
128 pages
Cost: $20

Beneath the Valley

Catchfire — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 01:40:54 +0000

* SOLD OUT

‘Beneath the Valley’ (2005)
by Justice Michael Kirby, Jim Comerford, Zeny Giles, Jan Dean, Jack Delaney et.al.

“Beneath the Valley is a people’s history in the most powerful and personal sense. We’re taken straight into the rich seam of people’s lives through their unforgettable voices. A humbling experience to read.”
— Mark Mordue, author of Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip.

These stories, memoirs, poems and photographs explore the tight bonds that weave families and communities together: their loyalties and violent clashes, their passion for music, their camaraderie and wicked humour, and the dread and horror of disaster.
Justice Michael Kirby, Jim Comerford, Zeny Giles, Jan Dean and Jack Delaney are among the contributors who bring to life the richness and variety of a fading era.

Beneath the Valley unearths the unexpected treasures of a mining community – straight from the soul of its people.

ISBN: 0 9757926 0 1
160 pages
Cost: $28

Seamark Pamphlets #5

Catchfire — Sat, 19 Oct 2002 02:13:54 +0000

* SOLD OUT

SEAMARK PAMPHLETS #5 (2002)
by Marion Halligan et al. ’The Christmas I’ll Never Forget’
Cover by Angela Cowan. Illustrations by Sophia Montefiore and Angela Cowan. Layout by Anna Kaemmerling.
Many people have feelings for the festive season which mingle celebration with poignant memories. This delightful anthology of memoirs, stories and poetry was selected by Karen Whitelaw and Don Cohen from work submitted by members and friends of Catchfire Press. The featured memoir by the patron of the Press, Marion Halligan, is especially evocative of the mixed emotions of mortals at this season. Other writers included are Angela Cockburn, Zeny Giles, David Kibble, Rina Robinson, Alice Sinclair, Margaret Steinberger, John Stokes, Jean Talbot, Norman Talbot, Ron Vickress and Margaret Watts.

32 pages, r.r.p. $10

Caught in the Light

Catchfire — Mon, 19 Aug 2002 01:43:32 +0000

* SOLD OUT

‘Caught in the Light: a celebration of Newcastle’ (2002)
by Zeny Giles
Zeny Giles has won national short story competitions, published a novel, Between Two Worlds, and a short story collection, Miracle of the Waters, and had her play, Zorica, performed in schools throughout the Hunter Valley. These have all been on migrant and multi-cultural themes. She has also collaborated with a photographer in a book about migrant experience in the Hunter, and with a composer on an opera about shipwrecks.

Her Caught in the Light is a fascinating mixed-mode book; intensely locative, the collection groups short stories, poems, autobiography, photographs and essays around each of four places: the Newcastle BHP, Hunter Street milk-bars, the Royal Newcastle Hospital and the Newcastle Ocean Baths, all as experienced—and as created—by migrants from other cultures and languages. It should be noted that two of these focal places no longer exist, as going concerns, and the other two are severely threatened by socio-cultural and economic change; how timely, then, is this unforgettable celebration! Helen Garner says,

Zeny Giles revels in this city. In her skilled and sensitive tribute, she moves with a light step from mood to mood, sharp-eyed, warm-hearted, inspired by a quiet passion.

The book is produced in accordance with Catchfire’s now established standards of excellence. Its cover is by Clare Enright, the winner of a Catchfire Press competition for senior design students at the University of Newcastle.

Caught in the Light was launched by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Newcastle, John and Cathy Tate, in September 2002 at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, and welcomed at the Friends of the University’s Lunch With A Writer, also in September, at the Capri Plaza Hotel in Newcastle West.

ISBN: 0 9577330 5 4
133 pages
r.r.p. $22.95

Heaven’s Gate

Catchfire — Thu, 19 Jul 2001 01:48:13 +0000

‘Heaven’s Gate’ (2001)
by Trevor Fing

This, Trevor Fing’s first novel, was written in a series of NSW prisons. He knows the chafing oppression, menace and claustrophobia of ‘inside’ as one who is enduring years in jail, and the freedom and peril of the skies as one who has flown in both. The soundless precision of expert criminal trespass and the meticulous alertness of a helicopter pilot come through, chill and passionate, as you have never read them before.

Located in an authentic Central Coast, Sydney, Hunter, and neighbouring areas, and equally authentic Maitland, Long Bay and Lismore prisons. Heaven’s Gate (prison slang for Release Date) is a helicopter book, as well as a prison story, a crime thriller, and a police corruption drama. It begins, ‘Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.’ Jake Love is a quiet, unambitious man, devoted to his beautiful wife, their four-year-old son, and his craft as a helicopter pilot. Admittedly, some of his activities might not quite match the letter of the law, but Jake thought he could look forward to tomorrow. His arrest and conviction show how a bent cop as unscrupulous as Detective Theo Wolfe can change his victim’s world.

Danny Steel was a long-term, dedicated and precise criminal. It was twenty years since he had asked anything of tomorrow, and that had been under a different name, in a different country. His every job was solo, using a different methodology based on months or years of impeccable research: if anyone could avoid the processes of justice, it was Danny. His arrest and conviction show how a shrewd cop, with a sufficient slice of luck, can see past the most meticulous defences.

Thanks to these contrasting police operations, Jake and Danny meet; a bond of trust is forged in a grim prison yard, with maiming or death only a heartbeat away. As Jake’s unjust imprisonment lacerates his family and his future, Danny’s long-lost family is recreated, in the form of a splendid, grown-up daughter he did not know had even been born.

Jake serves his sentence, and tries to take up his old life and damaged marriage again—with the help of Danny’s stashed-up fortune. Admittedly, he cannot be sure that Detective Wolfe will leave him in peace, but at least he has a second chance. Then he finds that his friend Danny has only months to live. He will die in prison, and the reunion with his new-found daughter will not happen.

Rather than allow his friend’s tomorrows to be snatched from him in the bitter futility of jail, Jake hatches a complex plot by which, as a chopper pilot, he can spring Danny, yet have a neat intercontinental alibi, but complex plots have a thousand ways to go wrong. By a precarious mixture of luck and daring, he lifts Danny out of jail, and no one can prove he had anything to do with it. But, simultaneously, a dreadful, precise revenge is taken on Detective Wolfe.

Trent Penfold’s winning design evokes the novel’s prison and helicopter motifs with moody eloquence. Because the author could not be given day release, it seemed appropriate to fly the first copies by helicopter down Newcastle Harbour for the media launching in November 2001. They were accepted by Councillor Barbara Gaudry on behalf of the Lord Mayor of Newcastle. This was the first Catchfire launching to be given TV coverage.

ISBN: 0 9577330 4 6
362 pages
r.r.p. $29.95