Welcome!

I'm Sylvia Petter. I'm an Australian in Austria and I write fiction, essays and poems.

Stories, poems and work in progress can also be found in my blogbooks: Collected Web Stories, Stories in French , Stories in German, Merc's Shorties (300 & 30-word stories), The Golfer's Cookbook, the novella, GUT, or How Pippa Sandberg Changed the World and Collected Poems.

Feel free to browse. If this isn't your first time, you might have to refresh.

Happy reading and writing!

Artwork by Sharon Ratheiser © 2002

Writing QuillNews!

  • Visit my blog at Merc's World for my Blogbooks and ruminations, and my latest news. For a recent interview on Radio Ether, an expat radio in Vienna, just click on the loudspeaker at the end of this link.

  • The story collection, Back Burning, was published by IP, (Queensland, Australia).

  • The story, "Channeling Blues", appears in 100 Stories for Haiti

  • The story, "Trashion Passion", appears in 50 Stories for Pakistan

  • The story, "The Making of an Imaginary Friend", appears in A Pint and a Haircut - True Irish Stories

  • The story, "The Burka", appears in 100 Stories for Queensland

  • The article, "Olfactory Imagery in the Australian Lives in Selected Short Stories of Janette Turner Hospital", appears in Vol. 2 of Australian Studies, the online journal of the British Australian Studies Association (BASA).

  • The contribution, Mercury Blobs, appears in Writers on Writing: The Art of the Short Story.

  • See Francafonia for Un ami imaginaire, the French version of An Imaginary Friend. The original story appears in my collection, THE PAST PRESENT, and was translated into French by Geneviève Hébert.