A young and exciting new literary voice, emerging from one of Australia's worst natural disasters.
Alice Bishop grew up in Christmas Hills, Victoria. Her writing has been published by Meanjin, Overland, Australian Book Review, Lip Magazine and the Wheeler Centre. Her debut book, a short story collection, is called A Constant Hum.
‘Unflinching…The prose is clear-eyed and forensic. There’s none of
the sensationalism of tabloid journalism, which is not to say that
Bishop is dispassionate…The further the reader moves through the
pages, the more intense the stories…Confronting and poetic.’
*Age*
‘[A Constant Hum is] empathetic, eloquent and nuanced…Bishop lays
bare the emotional and psychological consequences of one of the
worst fires in Australia’s modern history…This is a deeply humane
collection, capturing trauma and grief as well as love and healing.
Most importantly, it is a beautiful read. Some pieces are only one
or two sentences long. Yet those sentences deserve—and in fact
demand—to be savoured. As you read, put the book down and reckon
with the words. Bishop and her family lost their home in Christmas
Hills that day, and that personal experience informs the writing,
but the stories do not offer a single narrative or perspective…This
collection writes the Black Saturday Fires into Australian
literature…For all of us, it is a robust reminder that we live in
one of the driest—and most prone to bushfire—countries on the
planet…In the decade since Black Saturday, Bishop has honed her
writing craft…One hopes she has more work—perhaps a novel—on the
way.’
*Age*
‘Alice Bishop’s debut collection of stories packs an emotional
punch…We step into the lives of those who survived, physically at
least, the tragic and calamitous fires…It is refreshing and
pleasing that Bishop spends more of her time exploring the impact
of the bushfires through the emotionality of her characters and
getting at their inner drives and motives.’
*Saturday Paper*
‘Extremely well measured…A heartbreakingly beautiful book that is
both uncomfortable and essential reading.’
*Kill Your Darlings*
‘Shows us Australia in all its brutal intensity…The stories portray
people in both their complexity and their ordinariness—because they
could easily be any of us.’
*Herald Sun*
‘These kaleidoscopic visions of fire, trauma and loss twist into a
closely observed chronicle of people and place—of humanity and
hope. Dazzling writing, acutely attentive to simple truths.’
*Jonathan Green*
‘A Constant Hum is a beautiful book—often understated, but all the
more devastating for this. The stories are delicate and keenly
observed, exploring the difficult territories of grief and loss,
homesickness and fear, and an enduring human resilience that always
comes at a cost. Bishop is an elegant and lyrical writer, and these
are finely wrought and tender stories, always pulsing with empathy
and a lingering hope, even in the face of extremity and great
pain.’
*Fiona Wright*
‘A Constant Hum is a remarkable work of fiction, producing a suite
of stories dealing with the fundamental human concerns of love,
grief and recovery. Alice Bishop has the capacity to convey such
emotions with tenderness, a lightness of touch and true craft. She
is a writer of the highest quality.’
*Tony Birch*
‘In this resonant collection, Bishop gives both scope and startling
immediacy to one of Victoria’s darkest days. These are indelible
lives, and A Constant Hum is an essential, intimate charting of the
farthest reaches of devastation and hope.’
*Josephine Rowe*
‘A Constant Hum brings the reality of bushfire to life and should
be compulsory reading for all Australians, especially
city-dwellers.’
*Books+Publishing (starred review)*
‘We witness the full impact of the fires…and while the characters
change, we’re always mindful of their context. A Constant Hum’s
other strength is at the sentence level, and Bishop’s descriptions
have both an otherworldly and strong, realistic typicalness to
them...It’s easy to take a cynical view of the connected
short-story collection [but] Bishop’s collection takes a much more
successful route, a collection linked together in tone.’
*Readings*
‘A gripping short story collection detailing the fallout of a
natural disaster that’s very specific to our nation: bushfire.’
*Happy Mag*
‘[Alice Bishop’s] gripping stories pay homage to the people lost
and those left behind with sentences crafted as deftly as if they
were oil paintings…all manage to bring beauty, poise, depth and
light to the darkest of days.’
*Adelaide Review*
‘Amazing, beautiful, important.’
*Final Draft, 2SER*
‘Beautiful…It’s incredible.’
*Radio NZ Nine to Noon*
‘Tenderly written portraits of heartache.’
*3CR*
‘Hope prevails over horror and human tragedy in each beautifully
written tale.’
*Sunday Age*
‘Possibly the most quintessentially Australian book I’ve ever read.
It hums with vernacular, cultural references—models of cars, brands
of ice-cream, the names of TV shows—flora and fauna that are only
found on this island continent…All [the stories] are written with a
forensic eye for detail, often focused on finding beauty in
grief…The picture that builds is emotionally intense…This is not a
book to plow through, but one to savour, to cogitate on, to mull
over…[Bishop writes with] care, kindness and great
authenticity.’
*Reading Matters*
‘Completely, hauntingly, divine…stunning…This collection feels both
assured and vulnerable, a hard and hurting reading but necessary
and so very, very fulfilling. I loved it.’
*Alpha Reader*
'Every word counts... While some of the stories in this collection
describe astonishing and exhilarating acts of survival, most
concern resilience and less dramatic moments that are not usually
discussed. How do people survive after a life changing event? How
do they find a new normality?'
*Sydney Review of Books*
‘Hugely impressive…A major contribution to the growing body of work
about the Black Saturday bushfires, and, not coincidentally, to the
literature of environmental precarity. Highly recommended…I really
loved it…It’s so cleverly positioned in the way it looks back by
bearing witness, but simultaneously reimagines the present and
prefigures the future. And it's so beautifully observed.’
*James Bradley*
‘An immersive reading experience…Stopped me in my tracks.’
*Garret*
‘Alice Bishop may be the début writer of the year.’
*Astrid Edwards, ABR*
‘A remarkable approach to the physical, emotional and spiritual
impact of the Black Saturday fires…blessed with a tender,
compassionate aesthetic.'
*Sydney Morning Herald*
‘Completely, hauntingly divine.’
*AlphaReader*
‘Perhaps Bishop’s A Constant Hum should be the next book
recommended for our federal parliamentarians’ nightstands.’
*Justine Hyde*
‘So accomplished and so easy in its prose.’
*No Cartridge Audio*
‘[A] shimmering treasure…Beauty, darkness, grief, humanness and
hope…Exquisite.’
*Holly Ringland*
‘Some pieces are only a sentence or two, but even those snippets
pack an emotional punch, and I found the varying story lengths
built a sense of collective grief—and hope. A Constant Hum brims
with Aussie cultural references, making it hard to imagine the
events in any other setting. But it also pokes at bigger
questions—how do people change after a life-changing event? how
does one rediscover normality?—that many of us are asking these
days.’
*New York Times*
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