Little Houses, Big Forests ─ Desire Is No Light Thing

Little houses, big forests (desire is no light thing) is an anthology of essays, short fiction, novel extracts and film stills - the first containment in one place of the writing and visual work of Siouxzi Mernagh. The book is an invitation to get lost within varied landscapes of its pages: middle-of-nowhere Australia, the minds of Susan Sontag and W.G Sebald, and, most prominently, the proverbial forests of all of our childhoods. There are, however, a few thematic paths to trace through these landscapes. Coming-of-age desire, our uneasy sense of self when isolated in nature and female sexuality become the mile-markers. The invitation to get lost is an invitation to come out the other side with the sense that being lost is not necessarily a state to be avoided but one in which we can occasionally luxuriate in.

Siouxzi L Mernagh is an Australian-born writer and artist and an affiliated fellow of the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry. She is a former research fellow of the ICI, having undertaken a fellowship concerning the spatial, temporal and sexual tensions within psychoanalytic films and subsequently completing an experimental narrative film titled 'The Dangers' as a direct response to her research. Siouxzi has since produced provocative and sensual work in writing, moving-image, installation, photography and performance in Sydney, London and throughout Europe. Extracts from her first novel, White Tales, were published by Turia & Kant (Wien/ Berlin) as part of the volume "Tension/ Spannung". Her recently completed novel manuscript 'Our Little Wooden House in the Forest' (alt. working title 'In the dark, dark room'), stems from her research with the ICI and her residency at Mustarinda, Finland. She is based in Berlin.