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Wordplay

Illustration: Simon Letch.

Puns work by creating collusion between coiner and decoder, forging a gnostic circle of sorts. This same transference is enacted in our brains as well, according to new research.

Jesse Blackadder's new story of love and grief

"I remember it feeling like it was the day my childhood finished and my adult life began."

Jesse Blackadder ​had tried once before to write about her two-year-old sister drowning in the family swimming pool. But the grief proved to be too raw and the book was shelved. Now she has tried again.

Novel imagines how life could be different

Michelle de Kretser in her home in Dulwich Hill.

As in the Miles Franklin-winning Questions of Travel, Michelle de Kretser deploys her caustic wit and sharp social observation mercilessly in her new novel. Her targets are big and small, soft and hard.

Turning Pages

History of Wolves, the debut novelist by American Emily Fridlund, is on the Man Booker shortlist.

There are calls for a Booker Brexit. But oddly enough, the protesters are not fuming insular Brits, but American readers.

Wordplay

Illustration: Simon Letch

The tongue-twisting label LGBTQIA doesn't satisfy everybody's wishes as to how they might be included and described.