Available at all good bookstores. Pre-order from Amplify Bookstore for pick up at our launch in Melbourne, 1 September at 6.30PM.

Against Disappearance Essays on Memory

edited by Leah Jing McIntosh and adolfo aranjuez and Published by Pantera Press

ESSAYS BY André Dao, Barry Corr, Brandon K. Liew, Elizabeth Flux, Frankey Chung-Kok-Lun, grace ugamay dulawan, Hannah Wu, Hasib Hourani, Hassan Abul, Jon Tjhia, Kasumi BorCzyk, Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn, Lou Garcia-Dolnik, Lur Alghurabi, Mykaela Saunders, Ouyang Yu, Ruby-Rose Pivet-Marsh, Ryan Gustafsson, Suneeta Peres da Costa and Veronica Gorrie

In this collection of new essays from the Liminal & Pantera Press Nonfiction Prize longlist, First Nations writers and writers of colour bend and shift boundaries, query the past and envision new futures. They ask: How do we write or hold our former selves, our ancestries? How does where we come from connect to where we are headed? How do we tell the stories of those who have been diminished or ignored in the writing of history? How do we do justice to the lives they lived, or to the people they were?

From the intricacies of trans becoming, to violences inflicted on stateless peoples, to complex inheritances and the intertwining of tradition, politics and place, this prescient collection challenges singular narratives about the past, offering testimony and prophecy alike.

Against Disappearance is hot with guts. Each startling essay complicates memory in this colony and beyond.
—Alison Whittaker

Praise for Against Disappearance

‘This book should be a seminal work in Australian letters.’ Nam Le

‘This book gets to the very heart of witness, memory, archive and what it means to write. An incredible chorus of why multitudes matters. It is magnificent. I want to press Against Disappearance into the hands of everyone I know.’ Jazz Money

‘Exciting, fresh, and profound. A diverse collection of First Nations and Writers of Colour, whose stories write underneath, between and above the mainstream to interrogate the nation. This collection will shift the way we think about and read creative nonfiction in the future.’ Jeanine Leane

’This is truly an explosive anthology of exciting voices you will be hearing from years from now. Each essay is a marvel in itself, a microcosm of insight and inventiveness; and together they make up the brilliant future of new Australian writing.' Alice Pung

‘Not written for white readers or to industry specifications, uncompromising, non-pandering, filled with love, awash with talent, this collection of sovereign essays sets blisteringly high standards of integrity and originality.’ Maria Tumarkin

‘Against Disappearance is hot with guts. Each startling essay complicates memory in this colony and beyond. When brought together, they present memory and presence as a conversation among those forced to the margins of power, rather than as a canon that any one of us can hold alone. Gracious but without flinching, these essayists interrogate just how we and they come to publicly remember and be remembered.’ Alison Whittaker

‘Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory (Pantera Press) is exactly the kind of invigorating non-fiction that small, risk-taking publications like Liminal, excel at. It is a physically beautiful collection, presented with an understated sophistication that reflects those same qualities in the works. Edited by Leah Jing McIntosh and Adolofo Aranjuez, this collection brings together writers from across a variety of disciplines and thought, that reveals its themes of identity, love, family, home in fragments, traversing intellect and object, a tapestry that is felt as much as read. It is exceptional to read, and exciting to imagine a future of Australian publishing inspired by works such as this one.’ Judges’ Report, for the Winner of Small Press Network ‘Book of the Year’