Shane Thamm wrote My Private Pectus while studying masculinities at Queensland University of Technology. After six years working in high school outdoor education, and the masculinised outdoor adventure industry, he became intimately interested in what makes young men tick, and the emotional challenges they negotiate each day, often in silence. He likes to give these boys a voice.

Jack has PE — Pectus Excavatum, a condition that causes a sunken chest — and I don’t mean the kind that pirates covet. As if this isn’t enough to deal with, his father, once a great footballer, insists Jack join the school footy team. Football is a game he has no interest in, especially as it’s one that invariably ends with a change-room filled with bare-chested males. Then there’s the problem of girls: How will he ever get a girlfriend with such an obvious deformity? An ode to manhood, My Private Pectus is bound to attract a predominately male readership, though girls should be encouraged to give this one a go as well, if only in the name of research. - Jenny Mounfield