Virginia Woolf – so Hermione Lee writes in Virginia Woolf, her 1997 biography of the celebrated writer – thought it immensely difficult to ever know another person. Today the winner of the 2014 National…
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Articles on Books
Displaying 741 - 760 of 849 articles
It is perfectly understandable for an editor to be protective of his own patch, but it is worrying when the editor of a national magazine, which claims to be the leading independent Australian literary…
As we begin to commemorate the outbreak of World War I in earnest, just how central the “Great” war is to Britain’s conception of its history is ever more obvious. And this is also very true in terms of…
Think Mary, Queen of Scots and a few key facts probably come to mind: she was Catholic, she was imprisoned and she had her head chopped off. But a poet who offers insight into 16th-century women’s writing…
This year’s run-up to the naming of the Man Booker Prize winner has just begun, with the announcement of the 13 novels that make up the longlist. They will soon be dissected and analysed by readers and…
The handwritten manuscript of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables (1862) – from which the blockbuster stage show and numerous movies ultimately descend – has arrived at the State Library of Victoria (its…
Young adult fiction and complex themes go hand in hand – not least in one of the most recent entries to this field. Melbourne-based writer Eli Glasman’s debut novel The Boy’s Own Manual to Being a Proper…
Are we being saturated with “inconsequential memoir”? That question was posed in the latest edition of The Lifted Brow (TLB), a print/online journal of new Australian and international (think US) writing…
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology…
When an author who insists he is “not really a social media animal” writes a Twitter story, we should at least raise an eyebrow. When that same author goes on to say he wrote the story at his publisher’s…
Booker-shortlisted novelist David Mitchell is currently launching his new short story The Right Sort – on Twitter. The award-winning author of Cloud Atlas and number9dream is tweeting his story twice daily…
There should be no hard and fast rules concerning book reviewing. That’s because reviewing constitutes a worthy genre in its own right, one that should not be limited by guidelines or mandates. Criticism…
The passing of Nadine Gordimer is a tremendous loss, both to South Africa and to the literary world. For me, and others who knew her, it will also be an enormous personal loss. Born in November 1923, Nadine…
… further from the far, safe place where I began, the green lands of my father’s farm, further from the last inhabited outpost of the known world, further from speech even, into the sighing grasslands…
Given the extent of the brouhaha that has surrounded Shakespeare’s big 450, it’s worth remembering that we’re marking the anniversary of the birth of an enigma. Records do show that he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon…
Book reviewers and the editors of periodicals that commission them are used to sour assessments of their worth, but Professor John Dale’s article on The Conversation yesterday is in a class of its own…
Good book reviews are all alike while every bad review is bad in its own way. In Australia reviews are often bad in many different ways. Historically the trade has consisted of retired English academics…
Many professional authors are also parents, but recently, there have been a number of success stories of parents simply writing for their own children and becoming very successful. And this recent surge…
For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say. The foundational challenge of Eimear McBride’s novel is plainly visible in its opening lines, above: the incomplete…
Recently on The Conversation, I described a remarkable moment of language experimentation highlighted by recent Australian poetry prizes. Panning out to a wider view of contemporary Australian poetry…
Top contributors
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Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
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Honorary Associate in Creative Writing, The Open University
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Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
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Lecturer of English, University of Liverpool
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Visiting Fellow, Centre for Cultural and Creative Research, University of Canberra, University of Canberra
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Professor in Publishing Studies, University of Stirling
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Dean of Research (Creative), University of South Australia
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Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Education, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Associate Professor, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, Monash University
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Professor, University of Stavanger
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Adjunct assistant professor, University of New England
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Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature, University of Sydney
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Director, Monash University Publishing, Monash University
