Hidden Author

Letter to the Editor - November 2016

November 2016, no. 386 • 24 October 2016

TRUMPERY Dear Editor,Sandy Thorne seems to think Donald Trump can restore America to prosperity and its past greatness (Letters, October 2016). All great nations rise, decline, and fall. If Caligula can put his horse Incitatus forward as a Senator, I suppose it’s possible that the American people just might vote in Donald Trump as president. As Bob Dylan sang ‘The answer is blowin’ in the w ... (read more)

News from the Editor's Desk - November 2016

November 2016, no. 386 • 24 October 2016

OUR NEW LAUREATE Australian Book Review is thrilled to name Robyn Archer as our new Laureate. She joins David Malouf, who became the inaugural Laureate in 2014. Robyn Archer is primarily, and famously, a singer. She made her professional début in 1974 as Annie 1 in the Australian première of Brecht and Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins (a role she reprised in the 1990s). Other celebrated roles h ... (read more)

The Update - October 18, 2016

ABR Arts • 18 October 2016

Art Issue – 10 November ABR will celebrate the launch of our bumper Arts issue with a special event at the Monash University Museum of Art (Caulfield) at 6pm on 10 November. Find out what the likes of Jacki Weaver, Leo Schofield, and Robyn Archer rated as the outstanding arts productions of the year. At this event we will also introduce our new ABR Laureate, who will join inaugural ABR Laureate ... (read more)

The Update - October 4, 2016

ABR Arts • 04 October 2016

Voices from America Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton in The Metropolitan Opera's Tristan und Isolde (photograph by Ken Howa ABR Editor Peter Rose was in the United States recently to conduct a literary/arts tour of the northeastern United States. In addition to visiting sites that produced some of America's greatest literary figures, the tour party also attended a performance of Tristan und Isolde ... (read more)

Letters to the Editor - October 2016

October 2016, no. 385 • 23 September 2016

Feeble times Dear Editor,Alan Atkinson's study of national conscience and how it has functioned in Australia is timely ('How Do We Live With Ourselves?' September 2016). Returning to the eighteenth century, he argues that such a thing as a national conscience might exist but that it is 'especially feeble' at present. Naturally, this feebleness is seen and expressed in Australia's policies on offs ... (read more)

News from the Editor's Desk - October 2016

October 2016, no. 385 • 23 September 2016

BRAGGING RIGHTS Advances was delighted to see that Ashley Hay's ABR Dahl Trust Fellowship essay 'The forest at the edge of time', published in our October 2015 Environment issue, has been shortlisted for the 2016 Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing. The Bragg Prize is for short non-fiction pieces of science writing aimed at a general audience. Also on this year's shortlist are pieces by Ja ... (read more)

Episode #8: Vale Edward Albee

The ABR Podcast • 22 September 2016

In Washington, DC, Peter Rose and regular ABR theatre critic Ian Dickson discuss the career and legacy of Edward Albee, the great American playwright who died on Friday 16 September, aged 88. ... (read more)

Episode #7: Peter Rose in conversation with Stuart Skelton

The ABR Podcast • 05 September 2016

ABR's first US tour is in full swing, and Peter Rose has been to the Metropolitan Opera to interview Stuart Skelton as he prepares to become the first Australian to sing Tristan in the new production of Wagner's masterpiece 'Tristan und Isolde, which opens the 2016/17 Met season on September 26. Skelton talks about Marius Trelinski's new production, his own 'year of Tristan', and whether he will s ... (read more)

The Update - September 20, 2016

ABR Arts • 20 September 2016

Ben Mendelsohn Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn has won a Primetime Emmy Award for best supporting actor for his role as Danny Rayburn in the Netflix series Bloodline. Mendelsohn beat out Peter Dinklage – to whom he lost in the previous year – and Kit Harrington from HBO's wildly popular fantasy series Game of Thrones, among others. Mendelsohn's breakout role was in the 1987 Australian film, T ... (read more)

Robert Dessaix

Reading Australia • 12 September 2016

Robert Dessaix is a writer, broadcaster, essayist, and memoirist. His best-known books are the autobiography A Mother's Disgrace (1994), the novels Night Letters (1996) and Corfu (2001), and the travel memoirs Twilight of Love (2004) and Arabesques (2008). He taught Russian Language and Literature at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales from 1972–84. From 1985 ... (read more)