I first came accross Karen Hitchcock in Best Australian Stories 2006, and she has been in every edition of  Best Australian Stories since. This is not by chance; reading Karen Hitchcock's work, you are drawn in from the first line. She takes her motivations from marginal people, and by this I mean people who find the very act of living throws them to the margins: people who have distant husbands; people who eat for comfort and protection; people who struggle to connect with 'difficult' fathers...