Australian writer Charmian Clift was born 100 years ago today. One rivetting photograph of Clift captures the existential yin and yang explored in her work.
Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s witty, ‘effervescent’ debut novel follows a Sylvia-Plath-loving young Malaysian-Australian writer’s journey to ‘the heart of empire’ in the UK.
In the 1957 worldwide bestseller, Australia is – briefly – the last habitable place on earth, following a nuclear world war. One character asks, as they wait to die: ‘Why did all this happen to us?’
Henry Lawson said deafness was ‘in a great measure responsible for my writing’. Wright said hers was ‘part of the conditions I live under’. Their disability was inherent to their creativity.
Jen Craig’s new novel Wall confirms she is an ambitious writer in the best sense: she wants to convey deeply conflicted and even contradictory states of being in the world.