Mother Salad by Helena Pantsis

They say you can tell the gender of your unborn baby from the way your stomach sits, how your body changes, how big your nose grows. I found out I was carrying an adult woman when the interior decor of my uterus became comprised of orange linoleum tiling and ineffectual fans, velvet upholstered three-seaters and marble countertops.

Helena Pantsis’ surreal short story collection explores the plights of womanhood through the lens of mothers and the children of mothers. In 21 stories of the strange and the uncanny, Mother Salad unravels the image of the woman in shambles, identity fractured and exploring a world which has long abandoned the creature it so carefully constructed, betrayed by the very people she has been taught to trust.

‘Pantsis upends expectations on the narratives that society feeds us and how they manifest in our psyche over time. A searing and unique collection of startling originality.’ – Emily Tsokos Purtill

About the Author: Helena Pantsis (she/they) is an editor, writer and artist from Naarm, Australia with a fond appreciation for the weird, the dark, and the experimental. Her works have been published in Overland, Island, Meanjin, and Cordite, among others. She has won Going Down Swinging’s micro-microfiction challenge in 2021, has been shortlisted in WigLeaf’s top 50, nominated for Best American Short Stories and Best Short Fictions, and was the 2022 recipient of the H B Higgins Scholarship. In 2024, her debut short story collection GLUTT was published by Grattan Street Press.

31 Mar 2026
 

Mother Salad by Helena Pantsis ISBN 9781760803261