He describes this collection as "more than just pieces" and hopes that an "underlying shadow or stream" will provide for a distinctive and unusual unity. 

"The dream is to break out into a whole new place - or space - with the genre, to turn travel writing inside-out if I can.

"That's what I'm reaching for anyway.

"I really admire what Barry Lopez has done as writer obviously - and in a very different way someone like Truman Capote with the whole advent of New Journalism. I'd really like to get at the poetry of such writing, the sense of light and dark things glittering beneath the surface of the words, of feelings and thoughts that pull at you and linger for a long time afterwards."

Mark writes for Madison magazine in New York where his work can be found regularly. His essays and journalism als o appear in Salon on the net, in The Observer in the UK, and at home in the Australian issues of GQ, Vogue, Rolling Stone and various metropolitan newspapers. He was the 1992 winner of the Human Rights Media Award.

His short stories and poetry have been published in the Paris-based quarterly Purple as well as the leading Australian literary journals HEAT and Meanjin and book collections of Australian writing.

Though curently based in Sydney, Mark plans to return to New York to live and work early in the year 2000.