The thirty-two pieces in this collection were selected from more than 300 entries for the twenty-fourth annual Writer’s Anthology of the University of Technology, Sydney. Most of them are short stories, but there is also a screenplay and a few poems. There is a prolific, experimental approach to storytelling: one piece is a formalistic exercise in six sections, each using a different grammatical tense. Another is an epistolary novel in miniature.

The best have a focused grace, and are most successful at expelling everything superfluous and affected. The standout pieces are Harry Wynter’s deft and authentically bleak story ‘Dirt (Pancakes)’ and Madeleine Clague’s prose poem ‘Ash Scattering’. Though Wynter’s story is an unsparingly painful look at human relations, and Clague’s poem is a joyous celebration of them, both pieces achieve their effects not by self-conscious artifice (which mars many of the efforts), but by revealing simply what is in front of them, to set the everyday facts spinning against each other until something ignites.

It could almost seem an unintentional but cruel juxtaposition to have Nam Le – the wunderkind of young short-story writers – pen the introduction to an anthology of short stories by young writers. Luckily, this book is not sunk by the comparison.