“In the sandy soil of a coastal plain and under fallen sheoak needles, folded legs shift under trapdoor hatch. She is stirring, eight limbs twitching, woken by the drop in temperature and change in birdsong. Her burrow is a silk sheath in the ground, plugged with a lid of web with leaf litter attached to disguise it in the undergrowth. This little spider is a creature of the nightside, entirely nocturnal, trapping night in her burrow, penning darkness to keep out the day…”
-from ‘Ancestor’ by Cass Lynch

Keep an eye out for the Perthfest 2023 Visual Arts program, there’s a story by yours truly in its pages! I was really chuffed to be commissioned to write a story responding to the Perth Festival 2023 theme of ‘Djinda’, which is one of the Noongar words for ‘stars’.

‘Ancestor’ is about a little trapdoor spider who travels to the white banksia woodlands on the moon. She travels across and around all the lunar seas, lakes and marshes where at the edge of Mare Nubium/Sea of Clouds she finds an ancestor living in a giant burrow…

The program guide is free, and you can pick it up from Perth Festival’s visual arts locations like Fremantle Arts Centre, PICA, and John Curtin Gallery, among others.

The guide itself is a beautiful publication put together by this year’s Visual Arts Curator Annika Kristensen with the clever designers at Mess Books. It contains information about the various visual arts exhibitions that are happening around Perth as part of the festival, but also photographic works and writing relevant to the 2023 theme

Thanks for having me Perth Festival and thank you for sharing my dreamy moony spider story with the world!