Sarah Krasnostein’s book is not only a provocative premise. It is beautifully written with power and precision.
It is important for young people to read literature that reflects their own life and also expands their experiences of the world.
from shutterstock.com
We compiled a list of the 15 most commonly cited books taught by English teachers we surveyed. It contains only two Australian writers, neither of which are Indigenous.
While Australian fiction of the 19th century portrayed bushfires as isolated events. This week, more than 50 fires burned in NSW.
Dan Peled/AAP
Tales of heroic rescues and bush Christmases in Australian fiction of the 19th century describe a time when the fire season was confined to summer.
Open access publishing enables free and easy dissemination of work, but this does not meant that it engages with literary culture. Titles are isolated from bookshops, reviews, and cultural conversations.
Photo by Fred Kearney on Unsplash
The notion that a respected publishing house can be replaced by open access publishing is disproved by examining other recent examples, such as the now-closed University of Adelaide Press.
In The Town, inhabitants don’t notice the place disappearing around them.
Greg Brave/Shutterstock
Stella Prize winner Heather Rose’s new novel Bruny catalogues modern geopolitical concerns in a work that crosses satirical, political and family drama genres.
Anna Spargo-Ryan carefully layers metaphors throughout The Paper House to blur the space between reality and imagination.
Jean Carlo Emer /Unsplash
The Paper House is a layered articulation of loss and grief, perception and reality, where author Anna Spargo-Ryan demonstrates genius use of metephor.
Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek read The Very Hungry Caterpillar – which did not make our experts’ list.
Darren England/AAP
This prize confirms Melissa Lucashenko’s status as one of Australia’s top writers of contemporary fiction.
The six shortlisted authors for this year’s Miles Franklin, from left to right: Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Gail Jones, Gregory Day, Melissa Lucashenko, Rodney Hall and Jennifer Mills.
Courtesy of the Miles Franklin/ Belinda Rolland
Digital writers use innovative tools to tell new and complex stories. In contrast to e-books, their works depend on electronic code to exist.
Anna McGahan as Charmian Clift in Sue Smith’s play Hydra. Long overshadowed by her husband George Johnston, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in Clift’s life and work.
Jeff Busby/Queensland Theatre
Fifty years after her death, Australian writer Charmian Clift is experiencing a renaissance. With her forward-thinking columns, Clift’s voice rose above the crowd during post-war Australia.
Walter Withers, ‘The Drover’, 1912, oil on canvas. A recent book reinterprets Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife in 99 ways, offering new perspectives on the classic short story.
Wikimedia Commons
Ryan O'Neill’s book reimagines a classic Australian short story. He retells The Drover’s Wife 99 times in various forms, including a poem, an Amazon review, and even as a Cosmo quiz.
The ‘gothic’ genre was once thought to be inapplicable to Australia. But there is a strong gothic tradition in Australian literature and film, seen in examples like Picnic at Hanging Rock.
IMDB
Gothic texts are not all bloodsucking vampires and howling werewolves. An Australian Gothic tradition took root alongside colonisation, influencing writers from Marcus Clarke to Alexis Wright.
Zahra Newman in Wake in Fright. A new adaptation of Kenneth Cook’s novel retells the story of a man’s descent into violent masculinity with a female voice, accompanied by visual and aural spectacle.
Pia Johnson
In a new adaptation of the classic Australian novel, the story of masculinity and despair in the outback is told through a female voice.
In the novel Coach Fitz, the narrator is seemingly unaware of his humorous voice. This device is one way that the novel subverts expectations.
Shutterstock
At the centre of the novel Coach Fitz is Tom, an anti-hero whose unintentionally humorous voice drives the narrative. Tom is an awkward everyman, a naïve Don Quixote, a digressive Tristam Shandy.