Reflecting on what makes a place home, Alie Benge’s collection of essays Ithaca takes us to wildly different places from her past: from Ethiopia as a child to time spent in the Australian Army and Bible school, and on to a 800-kilometre trek along the Camino De Santiago.
Some places were not as Benge’s memory had left them, others provided a meditation on loneliness and longing; and a search for a sense of home.
Alie Benge won the Landfall Essay Competition in 2017, and in 2018 gained an MA in Creative Writing from the Institute of Modern Letters. Her work has been published in The Spinoff, Takahē and elsewhere. Ithaca is her first book.
Alie will be at Auckland Writers Festival.
Photo: Alie Benge
