Advances
Majestic gongs
ABR in the past has been critical of the paucity of writers receiving national honours and the over-representation of politicians, bureaucrats, and plutocrats, so it was pleasing to find several distinguished writers among those honoured on the Queen’s Birthday. Christopher Wallace-Crabbe, a stalwart friend of ABR, recei ...
A month of Miles
Australia is glutted with literary prizes, all competing for attention; but the Miles Franklin Literary Award, first awarded in 1957 and now worth $42,000, retains a cachet all its own. This month’s shortlist is very exclusive: the three shortlisted books are Roger McDonald’s When Colts Ran (Vintage), Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance ...
Internship opportunity
Australian Book Review – supported by the Sidney Myer Fund – seeks applications for an editorial intern. This is a unique opportunity for recent graduates seeking an entrée into publishing: no such paid editorial internship is currently available in Australia. The ABR Sidney Myer Fund Editorial Internship reflects ABR ...
Calibre of the year
Dean Biron and Moira McKinnon are the dual winners of the 2011 Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay, the fifth to be presented by ABR in association with Copyright Agency Limited’s Cultural Fund. ...
Chong’s covers
Last month’s cover subject, Paul Kelly, proved immensely popular when we began advertising a new series of portrait prints based on W.H. Chong’s cover images. Each portrait is available exclusively from ABR. The unframed prints – presented in limited editions – are signed, numbered, and (in some cases) hand-coloured by Chong, who, with ...
ABR is now online
This month we launch our online edition. ABR OE, which complements but in no way replaces the print version, is probably the most important innovation at ABR since its revival in 1978. With this additional resource, ABR is well placed to maximise its potential and reach those readers a ...
Takolander’s prize
Maria Takolander – a poet and academic at Deakin University – has won the 2010 ABR Short Story Competition, worth $2000. The judges, Chris Flynn and Peter Rose, were impressed, and amused, by her story ‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’, an artful take on academic intrigue and absurdism. It appears
Robert Dessaix and China During Writers’ Week last month, many of the writers on the program were outraged to learn of the plight of their fellow guest Robert Dessaix. The celebrated author of A Mother’s Disgrace and Arabesques was scheduled to fly to China at the conclusion of Writers’ Week, having been invited by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to take part in Shanghai’s International Literary Festival, along with writers such as Les Murray and Alexis Wright. China then banned Dr Dessaix from entering the country because of his HIV status. Ironically or not (was there a punitive link here, Robert Dessaix wondered in public), he was replacing Frank Moorhouse, who had withdrawn from the festival because of the imprisonment of Chinese writers. Led by Michelle de Kretser and Charlotte Wood, one hundred Australian authors and commentators protested at this offensive and unenlightened decision, as did ABR and the Australian Society of Authors. China’s discriminatory policy was widely criticised, even in China.
Ideal climate for writing
Climate change poses undoubted challenges for science – and society – but what exactly does the phenomenon mean for Australian cultural life? The University of Melbourne’s inaugural Festival of Ideas, June 15–20, investigates the question, with a program featuring scientists, environmentalists, archi ...
Three Companions
It is now thirteen years since OUP Australia published the second edition of The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (nine years after ‘Whitlam, Edward Gough’ launched the first edition). Peter Pierce, generally welcomed OCAL2 in his ABR review (‘A bountiful companion’, December 1994– January 1995): ‘The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature may be a touch too reverential towards its subject, but has enriched its study.’
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