Poet and author Maxine Beneba Clarke was in Brisbane last week talking about her collection of short stories Foreign Soil. She read at Avid Reader, a little bookstore known for being literary and interesting. Thinking about it now, Avid Reader is like a tiny bit of San Francisco in Australia.

We sat outside on metal fold-out chairs on the back patio in the cool evening air of a subtropical winter. Beneba Clarke’s voice and the authenticity of the different accents of her characters took me to Jamaica and London and warmed my thoughts. Her fascination with the vibrancy of the vernacular was apparent.

It was difficult to get the short story collection published, Beneba Clarke told us, and she’s a poet who’s used to persevering, she added, laughing. Beneba Clarke is Australian of Afro-Caribbean descent. She was born here. This is her country. Her place. This is where she belongs. She wanted this book published in Australia first. She did not want to be forced, like so many writers, to go overseas to get it published.But you know what people told her?

That ”even the major characters weren’t seen as Australian enough,” she said. Yet ”this is one of the most factual fiction books that exists in Australia.””Why shouldn’t a book like this be published in Australia?’’ Beneba Clarke asked.

Indeed.