Novel
Into the Sea. 2020. Brill, Social Fictions Series.
Taylah Brown is happy. She is. She has graduated university and she is in love and Sydney is a wonderful city to be in love in – all sunshine and blue water everywhere. It’s 2014 and the future is paved out in front her, a heat shimmer of possibility. Haircuts. Concerts. Holidays. Birthdays. Getting engaged, being engaged, going to brunch to show off the ring. More birthdays, a promotion, finding the right white dress. Getting married, going on her honeymoon, buying a house, having a child, getting a dog, going to the gym, moving house, camping at beach, weekends spent baking in the kitchen. New haircuts, new jobs, more birthdays, more birthdays… Choice-laden, picturesque, this is the good life. Isn’t it?
Grounded in ethnographic research and published in Brill’s award-winning Social Fictions Series, Into the Sea is an experiment in sociological imagination. The story follows a group of young adults through twelve months of the mundane and extraordinary. By closely inspecting the tensions in everyday scenes – family lunches on the verandah, mornings at work, dinners parties with friends, shopping trips to IKEA – the novel questions what it means to live “the Australian way of life”.
“You have to be an extraordinary writer in order bring to life what is remarkable in the ordinary. In this beautifully crafted work of sociological fiction Ash Watson does just this, linking the most intimate of local details in Australian everyday life to the big issues of global history and society.”
— Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London
Find out more about the book here, including reviews and a recording of the online launch.
Poetry
Buying Diodes. 2022. ephermelMAL 2, Media Archeology Lab.
Moths. 2020. Baby Teeth Journal.
Home. 2019. Brain Drip.
Short stories
Allen Key. 2018. So Fi Zine, edition 3.
Folded Up. 2018. Pink Cover Zine, edition 1.
10 Scenes in London, 2017. 2017. So Fi Zine, edition 1.
Joan Didion’s Recipe Book. 2017. Bareknuckle Poet Annual Anthology Vol. 2.
Single Beds Make Sleepovers Difficult. 2016. SCUM Magazine.
Men Are Not From Mars (the death of an almost-relationship). 2016. Getamungstit.
Joan Didion’s Recipe Book. 2016. Bareknuckle Poet Journal of Letters.
Crossing the Red Line. 2016. Getamungstit.
The Top Job: Reflections on Australia’s First Female Prime Minister. 2016. Getamungstit.
Happy Never After. 2013. Talent Implied: new writing from Griffith.
Vajazzled. 2013. Talent Implied: new writing from Griffith.
Graffiti Revolution. 2013. Talent Implied: new writing from Griffith.
Untitled. 2011. The Splash.
Editing
Fiction @ The Sociological Review. A short story series for sociological fiction.
So Fi Zine. An indie publication for sociological fiction, poetry and visual art.
Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music, volume 5 issue 1, special issue of fiction.
Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, volume 6 number 1, special issue ‘Fiction as Research: Writing Beyond the Boundary Lines.’