Ten Rogues: The Unlikely Story of Convict Schemers, a Stolen Brig and an Escape from Van Diemen’s Land to Chile (Allen and Unwin 2020) is a swashbuckling, rollicking historical tale from Peter Grose, who is a former journalist, a literary agent (he set up Curtis Brown in Australia) and the author of three books examining true historical events. Ten Rogues tells the story of the grim reality of convict transportation from nineteenth-century London to Australia, in particular the details of ten convicts who managed to escape from Tasmania by stealing a leaking brig and sailing it across the Pacific to Chile without any navigational instruments.

The winner of the 2018 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize was Anna Jacobson with her collection Amnesia Findings (UQP 2019). This slim book – complete with the author’s hand-drawn line sketches – centres on mental illness, health and recovery, Jewish traditions, family and food. Jacobson lifts topics as everyday as tea and ovens (and food, always food) and imbues them with an energy and brightness that is transformative and insightful. So many of the objects or topics in these poems were achingly familiar.