Hidden Author

Open Page with Tim Flannery

October 2015, no. 375 • 25 September 2015

Why do you write? For me, writing is the beginning of so much. It’s how I methodise my thoughts. How I explore issues. My books really are co-explorations with my readers. Are you a vivid dreamer? Oftentimes yes. My dreams can be repetitive: the same very specific geographies, the same themes. In the past few weeks they’ve been all about the last illness and death of my father, who passed ... (read more)

News from the Editor's desk - September 2015

September 2015, no. 374 • 26 August 2015

Jolley Prize Welcome to our annual Fiction issue. Among the highlights are the three 2015 Jolley Prize shortlisted stories. This is the sixth time that we have presented the Jolley Prize, which is worth a total of $8,000. After reading more than 1,200 entries submitted by writers around the world, the judges – ABR Deputy Editor Amy Baillieu, poet–academic Sarah Holland-Batt, and author Paddy ... (read more)

Open Page with Stephanie Bishop

September 2015, no. 374 • 25 August 2015

What drew you to writing? I can’t remember not writing – it is something I have always done. As a teenager I was strongly encouraged by some wonderful teachers and started to become much more serious about it. I have always felt this need, this pressure, to translate experience into language. ... (read more)

Open Page with Michelle de Kretser

July-August 2009, no. 313 • 01 July 2009

Why do you write? It’s an excuse to hang around books, which is all I’ve done, one way or another, over the course of my career. Are you a vivid dreamer? Yes. It’s like going to the cinema for free every night. I so look forward to it. But they are strictly private screenings. Where are you happiest? (1) Reading in bed, with a dog at hand. (2) In a green place, with warm rain falling. ... (read more)

The Peter Porter Poetry Prize

Competitions and programs • 29 July 2014

The Peter Porter Poetry Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious prizes for a new poem. The Prize – open to all poets writing in English – is named after the great Australian poet Peter Porter (1929–2010). The Prize was first awarded in 2005 (Stephen Edgar) and was renamed in 2011, following Peter Porter’s death. Past winners include Tracy Ryan, Judith Bishop, and Anthony Lawrence. ... (read more)

News from the Editor's desk - August 2015

August 2015, no. 373 • 30 July 2015

Supporting Australian writers In the May 2015 issue our Editor lamented the low or non-payment of many book reviewers (young ones especially). Peter Rose wrote: ‘The time has come for us all to become better literary citizens – more engaged, more informed, more giving. We’re all involved: publishers, consumers, and writers.’ He committed the magazine to doubling its base rate as soon as p ... (read more)

Alison Croggon is Critic of the Month

August 2015, no. 373 • 30 July 2015

When did you first write for ABR? November 2000. Which critics most impress you? That’s a really hard question, for there are so many. I recently tried to write a list of critical works that I considered formative: it got very long very quickly. I think John Berger is near the top: I love his lucidity, his careful ethics, and his perceptive responsiveness. ... (read more)

Christos Tsiolkas

Reading Australia • 30 June 2015

Christos Tsiolkas (1965–) is a Melbourne author, playwright, and screen writer. His début novel Loaded (1995) was made into the film Head-On (1998). Since then he has written five novels, including Dead Europe (2005), which won the Age Book of the Year fiction award, The Slap (2008), which won the 2009 Commonwealth Writer's Prize, and Barracuda (2013). The Slap was made into a mini-se ... (read more)

Germaine Greer

Reading Australia • 24 June 2015

Germaine Greer (1939–), is an Australian academic, author and theorist. She was born in Melbourne, completed an arts degree at Melbourne University in 1959 and a Masters degree at Sydney University in 1962, before going as a Commonwealth Scholar to Newnham College, Cambridge, where in 1967 she wrote her doctorate on Shakespeare's early comedies. In 1970 the publication of The Female Eunuch (1970 ... (read more)

2015 winner

Competitions and programs • 23 June 2015

Sophie Cunningham‘Staying with the trouble’ covers very different terrain from that of Martin Thomas’s and Christine Piper’s celebrated Calibre-winning essays: ‘“Because it’s your country”: Bringing Back the Bones to West Arnhem Land’ (2013) and ‘Unearthing the Past’ (2014), which dealt with historical wrongs and biological horrors, respectively. In her essay, Sophie Cunningh ... (read more)