Culture
Books
‘We have a big job ahead’: Melbourne Writers Festival adjusts for COVID-19
Artistic director Michaela McGuire is confident about the festival’s 35th year as she reveals the guest line-up and a mix of in-person and online events.
- by Jason Steger
Latest
Remembering a great collector and lamenting his family’s destruction
The latest book by Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes, is a homage to a collector and the collector’s urge.
- by Louise Adler
Kazuo Ishiguro, Richard Powers in running for Booker Prize
Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers are among 13 authors in the running for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction.
- by Jill Lawless
How author Nikki Gemmell healed after being jilted at the altar
“He’d envisaged me as the woman who’d look after the kids, not being a flourishing writer. He didn’t see me as a creative equal,” says the Dissolve author.
- by Robyn Doreian
Those crushing feelings of unrequited teen love? This book will bring them back
Tania Chandler’s third novel is all about those distressing high-school feelings that many girls had for older boys.
- by Jessie Tu
Family trip of a lifetime journeys to places not on any map
A mother and daughter set off to Britain with plenty to sort out.
- by Beejay Silcox
The best fiction and non-fiction books to pick up this week
Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart is a striking blend of essay and memoir. Meanwhile, in fiction, Melbourne-based Max Barry has achieved success by refusing to be pigeon-holed.
- by Steven Carroll and Cameron Woodhead
‘I don’t get passionate about sport any more,’ says Roy and HG’s John Doyle
‘Rampaging’ Roy Slaven is getting a little nostalgic. Or at least the man behind the man, writer, actor, presenter and comedian John Doyle, is.
- by Vince Rugari
What our Senior Australian of the Year told me when I visited
When writer Stephanie Dowrick met Dr Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann at home in the Northern Territory she learnt some important lessons.
- by Stephanie Dowrick
Forensic critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu presents a different view
Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe have mounted an in-depth analysis of Bruce Pascoe’s bestselling book. Do their arguments stack up?
- by Michael Davis
Opinion
Family
My sister has taught me to live with a ‘brave, glowing heart’
A debut author learns to write “deeper” from the art and passion of her sister Camilla, who lives with Down syndrome.
- by Hannah Bent