An autobiographical story about stiletto shoes, some chickens, a hole and an illiterate storytelling grandfather's dreams for his granddaughter.
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Published in Tincture 17 (2017) and edited by the very dedicated and thoughtful Daniel Young.
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In his broken-down gumboots and with his pants rolled up to his knees, my grandfather, Dedo Trajan, is sitting in the chicken coop again.
With my two eyes, I can see him from the kitchen window. With my two hands I’m twirling my two silky ponytails while, behind me, my mum is chopping the celery for the celery soup. She’s making it from the Margaret Fulton cook...
This short story explores the slightly subversive activities of three generations of females in a 'house under house' in a Macedonian village.
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Published in the very wonderful cross-genre U.K. independent magazine, The Wrong Quarterly (U.K., 2017). So proud to be a part of it.
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It's not always going to be like this. Soon I'll have to go back home to my quiet, one-bedroom flat in Australia. And my little nine-year-old niece, Tanja, will grow up and probably go on coffee and cabbage diets. As for Baba Slobodanka, she has a sick, sad leg that cries all the time from the hole that never healed up after her...
A story about a young woman who leaves newly-freed, 1970s post-Franco Spain to see the world.
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Published in Quadrant (2014) and as a zine (2013) by me. Gorgeous cover as shown by the talented Alisha Jade.
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In 1976, it was a good time in Madrid. Franco was dead. The city, the whole country was coming out from underneath his heavy hand. I was nineteen, full of energy, full of desire. Like so many others, so many other young people, I had fled to the capital from the small town in which I'd grown up, from the sun and the seasons and the sheep on the dry, rocky hills. I had come hungry for my life to begin,...
A young, female traveller befriends an older Macedonian man in Ohrid and discovers some strange truths.
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This short story was first published in Meanjin in 2014. It's no longer available online, but I do have a few copies of the zine version left. In any case, for your enjoyment, here is the whole story.
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We – Zlatko and I – step out of the bar and onto the cobbled street. We are leaving behind us Gligor, Gligor's sudden temper and the chair he has just thrown against a wall and broken to pieces. All the way back to Zlatko's flat, we walk without talking about this or anything else. We dodge the mid-sum...
When you go to prison in Macedonia, apparently, you have to take your own cup, bowl and spoon.
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First published in Transnational Literature in 2012. I also self-published it as a zine in 2012.
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Zharko, Alek and I are sitting together on this warm summer night under a dudinka, a mulberry tree, enjoying some rakija, home brew, soda and wine. The Ohrid lakeside breeze is blowing gently over us and Alek, with wry eyes, is telling me, he is telling us (me and Zharko) about prison in Macedonia. From experience. How you have to take your own cup and bowl and spoon.
I'm not sure whether to laugh.
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Take a walk on the wildside at the Macedonian Poetry Festival.
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First published in 2015 on one of my favourite Australian online journals, Verity La.
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Don’t get me started about the Macedonian Poetry Festival.
Put it this way. If it’s a sex fest that you want, and you look like you might be a woman, then go to the Macedonian Poetry Festival. Put it in your calendars. It’s in August every year.
Then again, if it’s actually poetry that you want, also go to the Macedonian Poetry Festival, which, as I discovered, and to my surprise, is not just a local affair but an event international in...
A bawdy tale about storytelling and desire.
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First published in Hecate (2015) and more recently produced as an audio story by Radio National (2016). Read the full text below and/or listen along here.
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The sock-seller is making me laugh as I stroll and he struts through Skopje city park. The sock-seller in his crocodile shoes, always a pointed toe's length in front, telling me his wise-fool, guest-worker stories from Germany – about the lies he had to tell to get the jobs.
'I told them: Yes, of course. My family and I are master cow-washers from generations. We shampoo and condition cows morning and n...
Based on a teensy bit of truth, this is a cautionary tale about having a wife and pet bear who share the same name.
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Published by the NZ journal Headland (2016). Click here to purchase the journal and read the full story. Here is a teaser.
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Not that long ago, in Macedonia, there was a man. He lived in a small town on a cobbled street in a wooden house. In it, he had a wife and a bear. He also had a job – not in the house, but at the metal smelter in the town's centre. It was this or nothing else. So it was unfortunate, then, that the products and byproducts from the metal smelter contaminated and pois...
A story about two old widowers who keep what must be a very large rabbit.
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First published in Hecate (2015) and produced as audio story by Radio National (2016). Read the full text below or click here to listen.
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On a borrowed bicycle, I'm cutting through a burnt-out field. In the distance I can see two old men. One is short and fat and the other is tall and skinny. They are carrying big bunches of weeds like bouquets draped in their arms. They're walking towards me, as if in slow motion. And I am moving towards them, a little faster, but not much, along the lumpy dirt path.
Finally, we are face to f...
