This week on Final Draft I had the great pleasure and privilege of speaking with Tony Birch. Tony is an author, an activist, an academic, a poet and essayist. Tony’s 2019 novel The White Girl about a grandmother striving to protect her granddaughter from the racist policy of removing children from their families, is still widely discussed.Tony and I were speaking because he has two new books out. A collection of poetry entitled Whisper Songs, and a short story collection Dark as Last Night. This is an incredible feat and one that is incredibly difficult in the current climate of lockdown where none of us can wander the shelves of our favourite booksellers and happen upon new works that we might like to explore.Tony’s work moved me to tear with its heart, its willingness to go into the dark places of our society and the zest and verve of its language. So I want to keep championing these incredible new Australian releases because these books need to be discovered…Just remember if you’re loving any of the books we talk about on Book Club - get in touch with your local independent bookseller and order a copy. They are your best resource for discovering new books and need our support at this time...In the eponymous story that opens the collection, Dark As Last Night Birch details a dark tale of domestic abuse. A young girl flees her home as her father becomes violent and is taken in by the strange lady next door.There she learns that this woman is not so strange, so much as she is independent of those minds who would stay silent. A refugee from Europe she has learned that “People say nothing and others die. It is that simple.”Operating almost as a type of fairy tale we are opened up to a world where this girl has a choice in her own fate.Tony Birch’s stories have a way of giving voice to things that we are too often not talking about.In the story Bobby Moses, a small town cop watches an old aboriginal man walking into the town he patrols. Knowing the predominantly white population will disapprove of this incursion the cop questions what to do.While giving the man a ride he learns that Bobby Moses has returned to a town he has no memory of. Taken from a mother he can now only visit in the town’s cemetery Bobby is seeking to reconnect with his land.Each of the stories in Dark as Last Night offer up stitches in a fabric of our social connectedness. These are who we are from the dispossessed and the victimised, to the violent and the racist.Tony Birch tells us these stories in an engaging way that leaves the reader to judge where they stand. I loved the stories in Dark as Last Night as I did the poetry of Whisper Songs.If you’re looking for a stellar read, check out these collections and support local artists!