Transtasman Literary Imaginaries: Stories from a Cross-Border region

What is the role of literature in the Transtasman region? Brigid Magner shows us the richness and variety of the Transtasman literary region, which extends between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, including lutruwita/Tasmania. She draws attention to the region’s quiet persistence despite its apparent fragmentation across national borders. By performing close readings of contemporary texts in which the shared boundary of Te Tai-o-Rēhua/Tasman Sea features powerfully, Magner illuminates what these works of fiction ‘know’ about life in this cross-border zone, with topics ranging from deportation and abortion, to coercive control and shearing.
The featured authors treat Transtasman mobility as textually meaningful and gesture towards a literary world that is hidden in plain sight. The literary forms they employ both reflect and in some cases create connections that move beyond their nations of origin. This book offers new understandings of the ways in which Transtasman literary works may be downplayed, ignored, or claimed by one nation, instead of being seen from a more generative transnational perspective.