Maps of the Margins

Portrait presents a selection of short stories and poems from twenty-four writers from Western Australia: it celebrates a decade of publishing by the Fremantle Arts Centre Press by recognising (to quote from the brief introduction to this collection) ‘the achievement of writers who have been part of the history of the Press’. As we would now expect from this Arts Centre press, the book is beautifully produced, its stunning cover lifted from a painting by Guy Grey-Smith. In fact, the title of the collection itself announces the link between fine art and the writing this book contains. This is a ‘portrait’ of a publishing house and the writers it has fostered, and the stories and poems are themselves ‘portraits’ of people, places, flora and fauna, streets, and houses – colourful, exotic, introspective, delicate, distanced, isolated.