MY NAME IS AUSTRALIA
ZOÉ DERLEYN
In the ten vignettes of Je m’appelle Australie, Derleyn combines the feminine with the absolute, the hesitant, the extravagant, the restless, the rebellious.
These are young women fumbling to construct their feminine identity, or other women who want to cling on to their twenties. They live on a fragile planet. They mustn’t forget to breathe. They try to put words to the smell of the rivers. Their beauty is frightening. In the morning, deer come up to their windows. Their gardens turn to dust. Winter no longer exists.
In the past, they were not afraid of being alive. These women, who do not know who they are, narrate a world we no longer recognise because it is changing so fast.
Zoé Derleyn captivates us with her delicately simple writing, her distinctive characters and her familiar yet slightly offbeat world.
In the short story ‘Yellow Dust’ (published in the Spring Issue of The Southern Review) the woman was not invited to the party. She simply tagged along with a friend and her little boy, and then followed the flow of guests into this garden, strangely untouched by the drought. She sips punch out of plastic cups and imagines how she could hide somewhere beneath the lush green grass, if this world seemingly on the verge of collapse really does fall apart. But perhaps she has already fallen apart, before the world.
Published in France (Éditions du Rouergue, 2025)
Zoé Derleyn is a Belgian author. She published her first collection of short stories in 2017: Le goût de la limace (finalist for the Prix Rossel and winner of the Prix Franz de Wever); in 2021 a novel: Debout dans l'eau (shortlisted for several prizes including the Prix Rossel, the Prix Roblès, the Prix du roman de l'Académie de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique and winner of the Prix Marcel Thiry). The short story ‘Poussière jaune’ [Yellow Dust] is taken from her latest collection: Je m'appelle Australie, published in May 2024.