Texts in the City: Things We Didn't See Coming

Joining Jenny Niven for Texts in the City is Louise Swinn, whose imprint Sleepers Publishing published the novel Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam.

Swinn reveals how she first encountered Amsterdam’s writing and details the process of bringing the book to publication. She discusses the book in relation to genre — in particular, whether it’s speculative fiction or literary fiction, and what difference that might make to how the book is understood by readers. She also talks about why the book is marketed as a novel in Australia and a collection of short stories overseas.

Further exploring the text, Swinn and Niven address the question of morality in the novel in the context of the relationships between the characters and the things that each must do to survive. What does Things We Didn’t See Coming have to say about love, relationships and crisis? And how does it relate to our real world narratives of disaster?