The Bearcat

An intimate psychological portrait inspired by the true story of a notorious cult leader.

bearcat: a large, tree-dwelling mammal; 1920s slang for a fiery girl or woman.

1987. Family is everything to Anne. Our Messiah. And Anne demands everything from The Family; their loyalty, their money, even their children. In return, she promises existential comfort to lost and weary women. Because Anne knows how hard it is to build a family - and how easy it is to lose one.

1921. A child is born on a sticky summer evening. Our Anne. Her mother, Florence, is trapped at home with an indifferent husband and a relentlessly demanding newborn, struggling to reconcile motherhood and her shifting sense of self.

For both women, the past is for escaping, and love is impossible to trust. All they can hope is that their family will save them.

The Bearcat is a dark and nuanced exploration of longing, power and the inviolable grip of history.

About the Author

Georgia Rose Phillips is an award-winning writer who publishes fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, literary criticism and academic scholarship. Her creative non-fiction novella, Holocene, was runner-up in the 2018 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers, and her short story 'New Balance' was a fiction winner in the 2021 Ultimo Prize. In 2022, her short story 'Beyond the Marram Grass' was a shortlisted finalist in the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS) Prize.

Georgia is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of New South Wales.