Portable Curiosities ─ Stories

A biting collection of stories from a bold new voice A young girl sees ghosts from her third eye, located where her belly button should be. A corporate lawyer feels increasingly disconnected from his job in a soulless 1200-storey skyscraper. And a one-dimensional yellow man steps out from a cinema screen in the hope of leading a three-dimensional life, but everyone around him is fixated only on the colour of his skin. Welcome toPortable Curiosities. In these dark and often fantastical stories, Julie Koh combines absurd humour with searing critiques on modern society, proving herself to be one of Australia's most original and daring young writers.

Julie Koh was born in Sydney to Chinese-Malaysian parents. She gave up a career in intellectual-property law to pursue writing, and now works as a tender writer to support her art. Her short stories have appeared inThe Best Australian Stories 2014 and 2015, The Sleepers Almanac,The Lifted Brow and Seizure Online. She has been a finalist in the Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards Written Word category, longlisted for theAustralian Book Review’s Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize for New and Emerging Writers.