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Two Steps Forward
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut. What binds the characters in Two Steps Forward is an indomitable desire to climb their way out.
Located in familiar Australian settings, this collection of stories brilliantly weaves together authentic characters and adverse scenarios. You’ll encounter battlers, underdogs and people who are doing it tough. Folks to applaud and causes to cheer. In this moving, assured debut, Irma Gold celebrates courage and challenges our notions of what it takes to be happy.
Located in familiar Australian settings, this collection of stories brilliantly weaves together authentic characters and adverse scenarios. You’ll encounter battlers, underdogs and people who are doing it tough. Folks to applaud and causes to cheer. In this moving, assured debut, Irma Gold celebrates courage and challenges our notions of what it takes to be happy.
- GenresShort Stories
190 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
1 person is currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
Irma Gold
16 books29 followersIrma Gold is an Australian author, editor and reader. Her debut novel, The Breaking, won the NSW Writers Centre Varuna Fellowship and was awarded development grants by artsACT and CAPO. It won a Canberra Critics Circle Award and was shortlisted (then Highly Commended) in the ACT Notable Awards.
Irma’s critically acclaimed debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward (Affirm Press), was shortlisted for or won a number of awards. Irma’s short fiction has been widely published in journals, including Meanjin, Westerly, Island, Review of Australian Fiction and Going Down Swinging, and in anthologies like Australian Love Stories edited by Cate Kennedy, and the tenth anniversary edition of Award Winning Australian Writing 2017.
Irma is also the author of five picture books for children, most recently Where the Heart Is, featured on Sarah Ferguson’s Storytime channel, and Seree’s Story.
For 24 years Irma has worked as an editor, and for a decade she was Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra. She is the commissioning editor of a number of anthologies, including The Sound of Silence, winner of the ACT Writing and Publishing Awards for Nonfiction, and The Invisible Thread, an official publication of the National Year of Reading 2012 and the Centenary of Canberra 2013 which anthologises a century of literature by writers who have called Canberra home, including Alex Miller, Marion Halligan, Roger McDonald, Kate Grenville, Omar Musa, Judith Wright and Les Murray.
Irma spent her childhood living in a beautiful old Tudor house in south-east England just down the road from Roald Dahl, and now lives by the beach in Naarm/Melbourne with two boys and a little black cat.
She is just a bit keen on travel, elephants, beaches, good coffee, jumping castles and sunshiny days. She is not at all keen on extreme heights, spiders and zoos. She is Co-host with Karen Viggers of the writing podcast, Secrets from the Green Room. Her name is pronounced Ear-ma.
Irma’s critically acclaimed debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward (Affirm Press), was shortlisted for or won a number of awards. Irma’s short fiction has been widely published in journals, including Meanjin, Westerly, Island, Review of Australian Fiction and Going Down Swinging, and in anthologies like Australian Love Stories edited by Cate Kennedy, and the tenth anniversary edition of Award Winning Australian Writing 2017.
Irma is also the author of five picture books for children, most recently Where the Heart Is, featured on Sarah Ferguson’s Storytime channel, and Seree’s Story.
For 24 years Irma has worked as an editor, and for a decade she was Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra. She is the commissioning editor of a number of anthologies, including The Sound of Silence, winner of the ACT Writing and Publishing Awards for Nonfiction, and The Invisible Thread, an official publication of the National Year of Reading 2012 and the Centenary of Canberra 2013 which anthologises a century of literature by writers who have called Canberra home, including Alex Miller, Marion Halligan, Roger McDonald, Kate Grenville, Omar Musa, Judith Wright and Les Murray.
Irma spent her childhood living in a beautiful old Tudor house in south-east England just down the road from Roald Dahl, and now lives by the beach in Naarm/Melbourne with two boys and a little black cat.
She is just a bit keen on travel, elephants, beaches, good coffee, jumping castles and sunshiny days. She is not at all keen on extreme heights, spiders and zoos. She is Co-host with Karen Viggers of the writing podcast, Secrets from the Green Room. Her name is pronounced Ear-ma.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 28, 2014
I was browsing the "Australian writers" shelf at Readings and this small book caught my eye - and I'm glad it did. It's proved to be a terrific find. Every short story in Gold's debut short story collection is well crafted. Each story is told in a different voice, without smacking of the experimental, uneven tone of some short story collections. The characters are deftly drawn and believable, from an old man wanting to see his mate to the single parents trying to rebuild relationships, from an aging junkie coming unstuck at the sight of his son to a woman who works at a detention centre, having wanted to "go inside, to help, to see what it's really like". Gold's characters, deep in everyday life, are often struggling with loss and always reaching for connection.
I enjoyed all of these stories, particularly "Sounds of Friendship", where teenaged Abby struggles to find some joy in the ugly life her mother's dragged her to in a seaside caravan park, against a backdrop of sluggish, scorching summer holidays. This collection is a fantastic debut.
I enjoyed all of these stories, particularly "Sounds of Friendship", where teenaged Abby struggles to find some joy in the ugly life her mother's dragged her to in a seaside caravan park, against a backdrop of sluggish, scorching summer holidays. This collection is a fantastic debut.
November 8, 2015
Irma Gold's debut collection of short stories charts the devastating distances between lives.
Here's a woman visiting her terminally ill acquaintance in hospital: "I realise now that I'm all wrong. I dressed so carefully in preparation - a new skirt and a black low-cut top. I see the vanity of this. The embarrassing display of my flesh, so full of life, is a mockery. I tug at the top, try to pull it upwards, attempting to make it into something more modest."
A young girl in the 1970s struggling to survive living in a dead end caravan park with her mum, her mum's dodgy boyfriend and teenage brother: "A family barbecue. Except Abby's brother isn't there, and her mother Fran's latest bloke is. Mick is wearing an apron with plastic boobs attached to it, right there in the middle of the caravan park for all to see....Mick slaps an aluminium plate down in front of Abby. "Sangers are up." His breasts are in her face."
A woman on her way to meet a hostile step daughter in her partner's car: "'Fuck," he snapped, and Audrey felt the word's pointy end dig into her. 'Just let me drive.'"
Gold seamlessly inhabits the lives of single mothers and fathers, a shell-shocked immigration detention centre worker, the poor, the homeless and the dispossessed. Many of the stories made me long for more, which is the mark of a masterful writer.
Here's a woman visiting her terminally ill acquaintance in hospital: "I realise now that I'm all wrong. I dressed so carefully in preparation - a new skirt and a black low-cut top. I see the vanity of this. The embarrassing display of my flesh, so full of life, is a mockery. I tug at the top, try to pull it upwards, attempting to make it into something more modest."
A young girl in the 1970s struggling to survive living in a dead end caravan park with her mum, her mum's dodgy boyfriend and teenage brother: "A family barbecue. Except Abby's brother isn't there, and her mother Fran's latest bloke is. Mick is wearing an apron with plastic boobs attached to it, right there in the middle of the caravan park for all to see....Mick slaps an aluminium plate down in front of Abby. "Sangers are up." His breasts are in her face."
A woman on her way to meet a hostile step daughter in her partner's car: "'Fuck," he snapped, and Audrey felt the word's pointy end dig into her. 'Just let me drive.'"
Gold seamlessly inhabits the lives of single mothers and fathers, a shell-shocked immigration detention centre worker, the poor, the homeless and the dispossessed. Many of the stories made me long for more, which is the mark of a masterful writer.
June 16, 2016
The number of talented Australian female writers is amazing. I nominate Irma Gold as another exciting writer to join this club. Wonderful stories, great writing. What else is there too say??
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews