The nature of reading books is changing: the closure of traditional bookstores indicates that paper book sales are in decline. It is easy to feel as though this will discourage children from engaging with…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Books
Displaying 681 - 700 of 852 articles
The news of P D James’s passing has inevitably prompted me to consider the Queen of Crime and what she created. But her death has made me think not of loss, but of what the genre, and me, have gained…
There is a surfeit of book prizes. Big ones, small ones, ones that award experimental fiction, others that concentrate on female authors, or young authors, or authors from Ireland or Latin America. African…
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…
My future city contains flying cars, shimmering architecture and vertical parks. Yours is probably different, but whether you’ve thought about it or not you’ll definitely have some conception, some image…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Ali Smith has won the second ever Goldsmiths Prize for boldly original fiction for How To Be Both. There are two narrative sections to the book – and two versions of the actual novel. Which one you read…
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…
Apparently, Jane Austen needs updating. Yet again. She’s a stranger to the 21st-century world. Her novels need rewriting for a modern readership, and this is what The Austen Project aims to do to get younger…
“Analogue” and “digital” are the two polar opposites of our modern world. The word “analogue” has become our catch-all term for what we see as slow, one-way and limited in functional possibilities; while…
I found it odd that there had never been a scientist as a Man Booker judge. There have been many non-literary types amongst the judges: a former spy, a former dancer, a Downton Abbey actor – but science…
We live in a culture obsessed with speed: fast-food, Twitter, overnight celebrity, instant make-overs and cutting edge techno-gadgets. We drive too fast, desperate to get ahead literally as well as metaphorically…
This year’s cultural debates about the constitution of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards judging panels are now giving way to consideration of the shortlists and their relative worth. Even as these…
Helen Garner isn’t usually thought of as a crime writer, but some of her best-known prose has been on law-breaking. She won the prestigious Walkley Award for her 1993 Time Magazine article on the murder…
Top contributors
-
Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
-
Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
-
Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
-
Honorary Associate in Creative Writing, The Open University
-
Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
-
Lecturer of English, University of Liverpool
-
Visiting Fellow, Centre for Cultural and Creative Research, University of Canberra, University of Canberra
-
Professor in Publishing Studies, University of Stirling
-
Dean of Research (Creative), University of South Australia
-
Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Education, University of Notre Dame Australia
-
Associate Professor, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, Monash University
-
Professor, University of Stavanger
-
Adjunct assistant professor, University of New England
-
Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature, University of Sydney
-
Director, Monash University Publishing, Monash University
