Debate about the lack of diversity in young adult literature isn’t new, but thanks to recent campaigns such as We Need Diverse Books, there’s renewed focus on why diversity in literature is crucial.
At events such as the Melbourne Writers Festival, it’s hard to avoid noticing that science, and scientists, are receiving special billing. The reading list of this Nobel Laureate is instructive.
Arab-Australian identity is not some singular, homogeneous label. Rather it exists as a spectrum and contains more complexity and diversity than the mainstream media allow.
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.
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?
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.
Given the pressure being applied to the majority of people working in the arts sector, we would be foolish not to consider the roles and inherited rights of Australia’s major performing companies.
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.
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.
Will J Grant, Australian National University y Erin Walsh, Australian National University
The history of climate change is writ large in literature - and not just scientific journals. An analysis of Google’s vast library shows a rise in use of phrases such as “unusual weather” and “heat wave”.
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.
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 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?
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?
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?
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.
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.