I recently watched Salinger (2013), the documentary about the late American writer J.D. Salinger, famous recluse and author of The Catcher in the Rye. In it, the word “genius” was bandied about often and…
Award-winning French author Michel Houellebecq is no stranger to controversy.
kojoku/Shutterstock
When gunmen (thought to be radicalized Muslims) burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo on the morning of January 7, the front page of the satirical newspaper’s most recent edition featured a caricature…
The excitement that accompanied the beginning of the Arab Spring has now largely died down, as a timeworn truth reiterates itself: when an oppressive power is toppled, a similar or worse one will often…
Australia hasn’t had a poet laureate for 200 years. We need one.
shutterstock
Oxford-educated and the possessor of considerable charm, Michael Massey Robinson was also a cad and a bounder. Convicted of extortion in London in 1798, he was transported to New South Wales where he worked…
What do school students bring to their understanding of Mohsin Hamid’s post-9/11 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist?
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been on the VCE text list for four years in a row. For me, it has been an eye-opener to teach this novel to secondary school…
Despite the huge and belated praise now surrounding John Williams’ novel Stoner (1965), much less attention has been cast to his earlier novel, Butcher’s Crossing (1960). Still, it’s been rightly hailed…
National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson speaks to a group of young readers.
Tulsa City-County Library/Flickr
In his 2005 book The Economy of Prestige, James F. English influentially argued that prizes thrive on scandal. Just last week, scholar Kathleen Horning claimed this year’s National Book Awards could change…
Jacob and Wilhelm were Grimm, no question.
Wikimedia Commons
Fairy tales have a tumultuous and fragile history. They originated as tales told by “folk”. They were passed down over generations to while away long winter nights, to provide entertainment at special…
Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest has won the inaugural Voss Literary Prize.
Tambako The Jaguar/Flickr
The Voss Literary Prize, for which I was a judge, was awarded for the first time this week. The winner, Fiona McFarlane for her novel The Night Guest, was chosen from a shortlist that included Hannah Kent…
William Boyd’s latest protagonist.
Land Rover Our Planet
Best-selling novelist William Boyd’s decision to take a commission from Land Rover to write a short story might strike some as a sell-out of the highest order. Indeed, some publishers and writers claim…
Literary awards can have a profound impact on sales – and, in the future, which books get published and promoted.
QQ Li/Flickr
There’s a lot of attention right now on diversity in children’s books – or, more accurately, the lack of it. It’s not a new problem. White people have been talking about this issue since Nancy Larrick…
This post is the third in my series about print-on-demand and book publishing. The Small Press Network (SPN) is a not-for-profit incorporation with more than 120 small publisher members. The 3rd annual…
Oh, no, wait – it’s the 21st century!
Carl Guderian
It’s official: men are better writers than women. The news came as something of a shock to a hardened feminist such as myself, but a quick survey of prescribed and suggested texts set for senior English…
A nation that understands tragedy is one that respects limits.
José María Pérez Nuñez
Tragedy is a peculiar thing. More than a style, different from genre, it cuts across art forms to carve out its own non-Euclidean aesthetic space. In the 4th century BCE Aristotle, in his Poetics, famously…
What happens when the enablers of our future vanish?
Ben Leto
The lost child isn’t a specifically Australian figure, but it’s certainly had an important history in this country. For more than a century, we have watched and read narratives about girls and boys who’ve…
This prize seems set to reward off-beat, experimental and innovative books.
The Conversation
It can take decades for critics to catch up with the great reads of the century. Even a cursory glance at the history of literary awards will confirm that cosy, comfortable, safe, or merely popular books…
Writing programs don’t just produce strong writers, they produce critical thinkers with strong skills for the workplace.
mpclemens/Flickr
Whether creative writing can be taught is a question that has been debated on and off for decades. Are writers born, is the question, or can they be made? Neither side of the debate has offered incontrovertible…
When superheroes die on the page, fans have learned not to mourn their deaths.
FRacco/Wikimedia Commons
A. David Lewis, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Among comic book fans, there’s the joke that the only characters in superhero comics who stay dead are Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, Batman’s parents, and Captain America’s sidekick Bucky. For everybody else…
Most people had little call to know of University of Sydney poetry professor Barry Spurr until a series of his emails were published by New Matilda. The messages contained racist slurs, misogynistic attitudes…
We don’t seem to be able to shake our cultural status anxiety.
EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga
Writing in the Bulletin in January 1899, Henry Lawson complained about the difficulties of making a living as a writer. In this article he offered the emerging author a piece of unvarnished advice: [S]tudy…