New Release
The Lockdown Tales
Ten people leave the city and meet at a farm in NSW’s Hunter Valler when Covid hits and the l,ockdown begins, in March 2020. They learn to support each other, end some old relationships and form new relationships, and become stronger together. On Fridays, for entertainment and sanity’s sake, they tell each other stories.
The Lockdown Tales tells the story of their adjustment to the new life, and also gives the first fifty stories, told on the first five story-telling Fridays. The stories range through time and places in the world, sometimes sad, often funny, quite often bawdy, and always human!
“The best book of stories I’ve read since Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women and before that David Malouf’s The Complete Stories.”
Adrian Colman, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Tasmania.
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Awards won
Runner-up of the Newcastle short story competition 2020
Winner of the Tulip Tree short story Merit prize 2021
About The Author
Telling stories in Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and the world
People find themselves in stories. Sometimes or always, we realise that we need something, and so we start doing things to reach that goal. We have no idea where we will go, what other forces are in play and how the story ends.
All stories end in death, the truism goes. But before that they can end in farce, triumph or tragedy. All we know while we’re living it is that a part of our life has formed into a story and we’re in it.
People find themselves in stories. When we’re in a story, or we’re reading or watching someone else’s story, it tells us who we are.
Alan Whelan tells stories. He is a novelist, award-winning story-teller and poet.
Follow the links to see his books, and the services he offers as a plain English policy, legal and technical information writer.
His blog is here.
Alan Whelan
Words From Readers
William Laing
The Lockdown Tales
This was a thundering good read, very fresh because of the up-to-the minute setting and the recognizable characters
Tangea Tansley
The Lockdown Tales
Alan Whelan brings us a clever, sensual and sometimes poignant collection of stories that would make Boccaccio proud
Leigh Swinbourne
The Lockdown Tales
An old frame for a sharp new snapshot of contemporary Australia
Adrian Coleman
The Lockdown Tales
A witty, crisp & lively imagination let loose: the defiant challenge to a lockdown.
Best book of stories I’ve read since Lucia Berlin’s Manual for Cleaning Women, and
before that David Malouf’s The Complete Stories.