Flying Hearts

Four teenagers. A flying heart. Friendship.

For most people Yennora is a name on a train line, a suburb disappearing as the 9:18 heads to Leppington; for Telly it’s a gallery, a place where life is discovered and recorded. In her world graffiti maps the suburbs, tags are signs that warn and protect. She’s sixteen, reality is wild and mysterious. This is a story about the wildness, about graffiti and dance, but most of all about the remarkable strength of young friendship.

When a chance encounter brings Telly and her friend Jessica into contact with Karr and Ahmad they begin a journey through the suburbs of Sydney that leads into the world of the Only Boys, an inner-city gang who haunt the trains. The realities of misogyny and violence begin to tear the group apart, and Telly must find a way to bring her friends back together.

Flying Hearts is a rare verse novel that celebrates the stark beauty of suburban streets and the secret lives of its characters. Vividly portraying the unseen struggles and joys of being a teenager, and decoding the otherworldly language of graffiti, it asks us to see the world in new ways.

Rico Craig is a poet, writer and workshop facilitator. His poetry has been awarded or shortlisted for many local and international prizes. Bone Ink (UWAP), his first poetry collection, was winner of the 2017 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2018. His most recent collections Our Tongues Are Songs (2021) and Nekhau (2022) are published by Recent Work Press.

He has worked extensively with young people in western Sydney as a creative writing teacher and mentor, most recently as Storyteller-in-Chief at the Story Factory (2012-2024), designing and facilitating creative writing programs for students, and professional development programs for teachers.

ISBN 9781764646574
1 June 2027
Distributed by NewSouth Books