Holding the Man, the screen adaptation of Timothy Conigrave’s much-loved memoir, has seen audiences laughing, then sobbing at its devastating portrayal of AIDS in Australia. It’s an important story to tell.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Hiroshima, August 1945.
Everett Historical / Shutterstock.com
John Hersey’s article Hiroshima (1946) is seminal in historical and literary terms: the shocking realities of the atomic bomb demanded a new way of writing.
A major challenge facing writers who want to take on the Bomb is that conventional description fails.
EPA/HIROSHIMA PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM HANDOUT
Hollywood has kept its distance from the bombing of Hiroshima, 70 years ago, and novelists, aside from sci-fi authors, have largely ignored the catastrophe as a means of exploring human nature. Why?
The burden of creating a more inclusive, fairer and more tolerant society is carried by the younger generation.
Hadi Zaher/Flickr
There are many similarities between blockbusting young adult novels such as The Hunger Games series and Australian books such as Taronga – but there are also clear differences in their messages for the young.
The release of the long list has opened the gates to the annual torrents of literary hobnobbing.
Men at Work were found liable for copying two bars from Kookaburra Sits on the Old Gum Tree – a ‘fair use’ exception would have prevented this.
Jolene Bertoldi
Nicolas Suzor, Queensland University of Technology e Rachel Choi, Queensland University of Technology
A new book and documentary tell us more about the story behind Men at Work’s song Down Under – and the court case it eventually led to. They also prompt questions about current Australian copyright law.
The reader who loves literature of the past seeks to forge intimate connections with those who are no longer alive. In reading, we feel ourselves able to get up close and personal with a dead author.
Paperback and hardback editions of The Book of Days, an illustrated anthology edited, designed and produced in three weeks.
Zoë Sadokierski
As well as a souvenir of the 2015 Sydney Writers’ Festival this anthology is a compelling argument for the future of books in print. Book objects are talismans as much as vessels for the content they carry.
Joan London’s The Golden Age won the Kibble Award last week, having been shortlisted – but unsuccessful – in several high-profile prizes previously. Deciding on winners is a highly subjective process.
EL Doctorow, pictured here in 2007, has died. His work in its entirety bespeaks a profound humanity.
Radim Beznoska/AAP
Over the course of almost six decades, Doctorow – who has died – wrote himself into the canon of American literature. He embodied the virtues of a classical storyteller.
Atticus is not who we thought he was – but maybe who we thought he was was wrong.
Paul Walsh
Atticus Finch, we learn in Go Set a Watchman, once attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, and welcomes pro-segregation speakers at local council meetings. But is he really so different to the man we know from To Kill a Mockingbird?
Making a splash in letters may be harder under changes to Australian arts funding.
Orange County Archives Follow
It’s hard to work out how funding for literature – if at all – fits into the draft guidelines of the new National Program for Excellence in the Arts. So what are the politics, and problems, at play?
Already having baby-naming regret? Don’t worry – look to the past for alternative role models.
Still of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Universal Pictures
Some parents have been horrified to discover that, in Harper Lee’s new book, Atticus Finch – long admired as a paragon of virtue – is a racist. Why? Because their kids are named after him. So, what now?
Mishani’s novels centre on rather ordinary Israelis, their ordinary lives and the tragedies that befall them.
Thomas Renken
Not every crime novel needs a Jason Bourne. Mishani eschews the obvious world of Mossad agents and terrorist plots you might expect in an Israeli crime novel – and the results are thrilling.
And the birthday presents have arrived.
Frank Gaertner/Shutterstock.com
Universities are places that teach ethics to students. But, on any given day, you can read about several university scandals. Do universities practice what they teach?
Dead brothers and grieving characters are everywhere in Salinger’s fiction.
Pawel Maryanov
Salinger is still known for the resonance his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, has with young readers, but at the core of his fiction sits a theme that is often overlooked – unresolved grief.
Many readers have responded with outrage to the notion that Atticus Finch might be racist.
Erik S Lesser/EPA