As we age, it can be hard to fathom the gap between our younger selves and the bodies we inhabit. Carol Lefevre explores this strange form of homesickness.
Anna McGahan as Charmian Clift in the State Theatre Company’s Hydra.
Jeff Busby/State Theatre Company
‘Literary couples are a plague,’ wrote Elsa Morante, married to Alberto Moravia. They’re one of the couples in this lively exploration of what happens when two writers share loves and lives.
Tom Roberts, Coming South, 1886.
National Gallery of Victoria
British and Irish girls and young women who migrated to Australia in the mid-1800s used diaries to record their day-to-day lives, document their travel experiences and navigate their emotions.
How can you get your kids to read this summer? Research has found they respond well to reading non-fiction – so we’ve gathered 6 top non-fiction books, recommended by the kids themselves.
An early poster for Monkey Grip, starring Noni Hazelhurst and Colin Friels.
MIFF
As material objects, diaries give scholars an intimate look into their subjects’ lives, including handwriting and mementos. What if diaries in the future are nothing but insubstantial digital ghosts?
One of the first contemporary personal narratives about living with HIV in the 21st century, Fever urgently interrogates the social meanings of HIV, and how they’ve evolved in the era of treatment.
Anais Nin, left, pictured in 1946.
Wikimedia Commons
Kate Grenville suggests we read Elizabeth Macarthur’s letters as ‘a wonderful piece of fiction, sustained over sixty years’. They were exercises in doubleness, concealment, and delicious irony.