"IRON Lace"
Anne Bartlett, Cath Kenneally, Lesley Kinnoch and Glen R Johns (eds) University of Adelaide, 1998

"Student creative writing publications are sites of great importance, and should be celebrated as such. They can be the place where writers are first published and therefore can be cited along a career, beyond the memory merely of a department, an institution. Through the goodwill and skills of the editors and coordinators they are an asset to a creative writing program and a contribution to the reputation and sense of the work that is being done in that teaching institution. And, generally, a thrill to each of the writers represented. They are never limited to a departmental readership because the multiple contributors always have families and friends and make sure that the publication is widely sighted.

Iron Lace is an anthology of writing by students from the 1997 Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. That it has been produced out of the gastronomical capital of Australia, Adelaide is pretty obvious from the contributions: of the nineteen poems and eighteen stories, I think I can only identify one that doesn't involve food; sometimes it's a peripheral thing, but more often a central concern or device. I'm pleased that the annual AAWP conference is being held in Adelaide this year, she thinks, anticipating fine dining pleasures."

Excerpt from review by Terri-ann White