Indigo includes twelve short stories, nineteen poems, a tribute to Elizabeth Jolley by Philip Salom, and two poetry reviews by Shane McCauley. These genuinely short stories are particularly good. My favorites include Caroline Reid’s story about transgendered desire in a desert pub; Amanda Curtin’s story, which begins, ‘she was never a topic of conversation’; and Liana Joy Christensen’s story about a wharfie who is diagnosed with a disease he ‘cannot even pronounce, let alone spell’. All are expertly controlled and surprising pieces that would be highlights in any Australian journal, not just a first-timer selecting from one tenth of the country’s population.    The poetry in Indigo sometimes strives towards emotions so broad that language seemingly cannot keep up. There are several exceptions. Lucy Dougan writes: ‘your sentences are rounded stairs. I am sleeping/ in a tower with bay windows overlooking green.’ Christensen’s lines, ‘six o’clock closing / would drive anyone to drink’, unreservedly belong to their Western Australian context. Helen Hagemann, Jennifer Langley-Kemp and Paula Jones experiment with form to create strong images. Katie Dobbs, previously unpublished, is impressive. The local setting creates a particularly supportive editorial attitude, with Ward stating at the launch: ‘Indigo is the place where the next Tim Winton or Elizabeth Jolley will be found honing his or her craft.’