Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen are on this short list of enduring must-read writers.
Left to right: Nobel Prize, U.S. Library of Congress, Yale archive
Here is a small list of pivotal texts by African American women from the past century.
Books are a good starting place to make schools more inviting places for queer students.
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Including queer texts in the English curriculum has the potential to affect real social change, including in understanding and confronting inequalities.
Children need to be able to see themselves in the books they read.
Cockburn Libraries/flickr
Children from minority groups rarely see themselves reflected in the books they read. This can negatively impact their sense of identity and their literacy levels.
Kelly Wiltshire and Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner examine middens damaged by off-road vehicle use.
The Coorong’s Indigenous heritage is threatened by off-road vehicles and climate change.
In his Quarterly Essay, Smee laments the erosion of ‘inner life’ thanks to digital technology.
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Smee insists that the rich and intense visions of artists such as Cézanne or Chekhov are increasingly lost to us.
There seems be an attractive quality to things that are ostensibly unhealthy or dangerous.
Alisusha/Shutterstock.com
Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud and cognitive scientists have all wrestled with the human tendency to behave in ways that are irrational and self-defeating.
The beach is a common setting for Australian novels, which often capture its darker side.
boxer_bob/flickr
While tourism campaigns often portray the beach as an idyllic, isolated haven, many of our beach stories depict it as a darker, more complex place. Here are ten worth reading.
Sylvia Plath stuck this bookplate into the front cover of her copy of ‘The Great Gatsby.’
Source
For centuries, readers have written in the margins of their books to indicate admiration, disagreement or inspiration. Plath was no different.
Kahlil Gibran, The Divine World (1923), Illustration for The Prophet, Charcoal.
Gibran Museum
After Shakespeare and Laozi, Kahlil Gibran is the highest selling poet ever, largely thanks to The Prophet, a set of 26 prose poems.
For centuries, Pulter’s manuscript lay untouched at the University of Leeds’ Brotherton Library.
University of Leeds Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt q 32
In a time when women were expected to be silent, no topic was off limits for Pulter, who penned verses about politics, science and loss. Her manuscript was just published in a free digital archive.
Kirsten Dunst (centre), Winona Ryder (left), Trini Alvarado, Susan Sarandon and Clare Danes in Little Women (1994). The book is now being made into a film by director Greta Gerwig.
Columbia Pictures Corporation,DiNovi Pictures
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is an enduring classic for girls, soon to be a major Hollywood film. Yet many of the book’s themes and morals were imposed by the author’s father.
Biologists are gathering evidence of green algae (pictured here in Kuwait) becoming carbohydrate-rich but less nutritious, due to increased carbon dioxide levels. As science fiction becomes science fact, new forms of storytelling are emerging.
Raed Qutena
As we enter the age of the Anthropocene, there is a growing recognition of different kinds of ‘un-real’ storytelling.
Gn fotografie/Shutterstock.com
Our love affair with the chair has horrible consequences.
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Have you ever read a novel in the second person? You probably found it strange.
Babi Yar: the World War II atrocity is one of the themes of The White Hotel.
GoldbergShalom
Everyone has a favourite novel that hasn’t made it to the screen. Here’s why.
Alexis Wright, pictured here in 2007 after winning the Miles Franklin award for her book Carpentaria, is one of many writers first published by University of Queensland Press.
Dean Lewins/AAP
The University of Queensland Press has a peerless record of discovering, nurturing and supporting Australian writers. A new anthology is a cross-section of many of their writings.
Comet in the sky, 1340. Wellcome Collection
Science fiction has been around for centuries.
An artistic interpretation of a Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings.
wikipedia/NazgulfanartDanijel
Not all heirs and executors take the same view when it comes to publishing posthumous work.
Australian crime fiction author Peter Corris published 102 novels in lifetimes, including 52 centred on the private investigator Cliff Hardy.
ALLEN AND UNWIN
With The Dying Trade, Peter Corris introduced Australia to one of its most successful crime heroes, Cliff Hardy.
Jules Salles-Wagner’s 1898 painting ‘Romeo and Juliet.’
Wikimedia Commons
We talk excitedly about meeting someone with whom we ‘click’ or ‘really hit it off.’ So why do so many of us hesitate to call it love?