When we waved goodbye to 2014, we also farewelled one of my favourite initiatives – The Year of Reading Women. After reading Joanna Russ’ 1983 book How to Suppress Women’s Writing in December 2012, author…
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Articles on Literature
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When Brian the farmer finished his poem the crowd went wild. Small wonder he earned the People’s Choice Award on the night. We were at a so-called poetry “slam” at a country hall in a place so tiny it…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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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Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
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Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
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Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia
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Honorary Fellow of the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne
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Visiting Fellow, Centre for Cultural and Creative Research, University of Canberra, University of Canberra
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Senior Lecturer, Literature and Gender Studies, Victoria University
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Lecturer in Digital Arts & Humanities, University College Cork
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Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature, University of Sydney
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Professor of English, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, ACU, Australian Catholic University
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Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, La Trobe University
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Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
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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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Visiting Professor, University of Technology Sydney
