The Lost Child – Leigh Swinbourne
The Lost Child
The Lost Child is a collection of eight fictional stories, some previously published. They all concern contemporary middle-class Australians. Six are set in Tasmania, one in Sydney and one in Italy. Each focus on an individual, who, because of unforeseen circumstances, arrives at a point of crisis in their lives and must make a radical re-evaluation of themselves. This is the connecting thread. The stories are naturalistic, of differing lengths and situations; each is tightly plotted, each establishes its own individual mood. Hovering around the set is an occasional feeling of the supernatural. There is also an oral quality, the sense of someone telling a tale. A care worker’s unwise interest in a dementia client leads him into a dark labyrinth; a man intent on suicide happens upon his doppelganger; an abandoned woman wonders whether her lover’s crime might prove his love. The overall intention is for the reader to fall into a story, to not notice the writing, or anything extraneous, but enter completely into its world.
About the author
Leigh Swinbourne has written for the theatre as well as fiction and non-fiction work. Resident in Nipaluna/Hobart, he has had plays produced and/or read by Old Nick, Hobart Repertory, The Australian Script Centre, The Tasmanian Theatre Company, Mudlark and Blue Cow. His play The Mark of Cain was shortlisted for the 2005 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award. Six scripts are currently listed (digitally published) with Australian Plays Transform. Leigh has had short stories and articles published in journals and anthologies. He is the recipient of writing grants and residencies from Arts Tasmania and Varuna Writers’ Centre. He has published two short story collections, The Shark (2011), and Away (2014), through Ginninderra Press, both selected for ‘Pick of the Week’ in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. In 2013, he was shortlisted for the University of Tasmania Prize for an unpublished manuscript, which was subsequently published as the novel Shadow in the Forest by Ginninderra Press in 2019. In 2023, a second novel manuscript was awarded a mentorship from the Australian Society of Authors. In January 2024, he published his third collection stories, The Lost Child.