Mandy Sayer
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 432
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Every great city in the world has its famous red light district - they are practically household names, synonymous with vice, sex and sin; Reeperbahn, Forty Second Street, Soho, Pigalle - and Sydney's very own Kings Cross is no exception. But, like those other famous red light districts, if brothels and cheap restaurants could afford the rent, so could artists, writers and poets. Since the 1890s, the Cross has nurtured Sydney's literati at its ample, bared bosom, either housing them or providing a racy - or even dignified - setting for their work. From Patrick White, Sumner Locke Elliott, and Kenneth Slessor in the early days, through Kate Grenville, David Marr, Frank Moorhouse and John Tranter, to Luke Davies, Justine Ettler, and of course Mandy Sayer and Louis Nowra themselves, writers have lived in, loved and looked at the Cross. Sure, she's untidy and a little rough around the edges, and maybe a little frumpy these days, but she's still the Cross, and she looms large in our collective imagination, provocative and pouting on the doorstep of the city. This collection will surprise readers with its breadth and range - Kings Cross wasn't always the bad part of town, as Patrick White and M. Barbard Eldershaw reveal. But there are also plenty of stories of vice and sleaze in there as well. LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS White, Patrick, Voss, Deamer, Dulcie, The Queen of Bohemia, Lindsay, Jack, The Roaring Twenties Gill, Lydia, My Town: Sydney in the 1930s, Slessor, Kenneth, My Kings Cross and poetry Cusack, Dymphna and F. James, Come in Spinner M. Barnard Eldershaw, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" Herbert. Bob No Names...No Pack Drill Johnston, George Clean Straw for Nothing Mackenzie, Kenneth Seaforth "The Refuge" Roland, Betty, Kings Cross Rose, Jon, At the Cross Baranay, Inez., Pagan John Clare, Bodgie Dada and The Cult of Cool Grenville, Kate, Lilian's Story Lennox, Gina and Rush, Frances, People of the Cross-True Stories from People Who Live and Work in Kings Cross Locke Elliott, Sumner, Fairyland Beaver, Bruce, poetry Doyle, Peter, Get Rich Quick Humphries, Barry More Please Smith, Vivian, poetry Sykes, Roberta, Snake Dancing Komunyakaa, Yusef, poetry Moorhouse, Frank, The Americans, Baby Tranter, John, poetry Aitken, Graeme, Vanity Fierce Bobis, Merlinda, White Turtle Davies, Luke, Candy Ettler, Justine, The River Ophelia Lord, Gabrielle, Whipping Boy Nowra, Louis, Red Nights Sayer, Mandy, The Cross McCuaig, Ronald, poetry