The Canberra Writers Festival in August is shaping up nicely.

Literary news and events in Canberra.

An exhibition of original artworks from some of Australia's best loved children's books offers a rare insight.

The rest of us muggles might stock our closets with board games and other junk – JK Rowling's is housing every Harry Potter fan's dream.

My blood always races whenever a fresh batch of words needs assessing.

A painful yet compelling story of pure narrative without authorial intervention.

A New York novel that starts off dark – and only gets darker.

A beautiful and horrifying novella examining the history of Buddhism in Vietnam.

• Review

Lives exalted and artistic triumphs celebrated in recasting a trio of literary greats.

A dystopian tale that resonated in the contemporary real world.

• Books

Author of teen fiction knows it's important to identify with all characters in his new novel Release.

Jamila Rizvi found Maxine Beneba Clarke's The Hate Race an uncomfortable but inspiring read.

A cultural history of hats in the West.

An unorthodox memoir of the "ways of seeing" that a blind person experiences.

Bibliophile Daniel Gray celebrates the rituals of reading.

A satisfying selection of writing by journalist-turned public intellectual Donald Horne.

• Crime Fiction

Detective Harry Hole is forced to deal with a very modern serial killer.

• Review

Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai's serves up bite-sized fiction marvels.

• Essays

An intriguing exploration of the individual, the internet and the state in three non-fiction essays.

• Interview

Lurid story of 1820's 'man-woman' murder mystery raises questions that still defy conventional answers.

• Turning Pages

why more an more writers are 'downsizing' from major publishing houses.

Literary events in Canberra,

I reckon we all have one foot in the bogan camp, assuming sociologists will ever define such a space.

One of Australia's absolutely essential poets, Fay Zwicky, has died on the weekend her Collected Poems was published.