Feature Articles posts
Dear Reader, May 2019
One of the perennial delights of working with new books is that there are always more new books (though it’s also a constant anxiety, since there are far too many to read, even in a thousand lifetimes), and we’re always furnished with advance copies well ahead of their release to the general public. As a consequence, I’m often reading something that won’t be available for several months when I wr…
On the magic of a Hot Desk Fellowship
Read an extract from Raising Readers by Megan Daley
If I have not…
Read an extract from Growing Up African in Australia
‘We always want what we don’t h…
Read an extract from The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
During the 1980s, in California, a large number…
Read an extract from Trace by Rachael Brown
1.00pm Coroners Court w Ron
– Diary note, 21 April 2016
I wince at Maria’s bruised face in the …
Read an extract from The Year Everything Changed
On New Year’s Eve, 31 December 2001, we buried our son. His name was Daniel. My husband Adam, his father and my sister stood alongside me in Singapore’s Chua Chu Kang Lawn Cemetery and we watched a small, white coffin go into the ground.…
A spotlight on a brilliant new Australian crime novel
Brandi is a writer who pays close attention to the physical; to the shapes and smells and sensations of the human body, set in vivid contrast to the torpor of a dead-end town. Wimmera is the story of two best friends, Ben and Fab, gr…
Australian YA: the quiet achiever
Professionally, you’d have to be a little short of Earth logic to give your heart away to young adult (YA) fiction in this country. The challenges come from all sides.
You’re up against industry snobbery, for a start, despite the fact that children’ and YA books as a category is that rare beast: a print publishing and bookselling growth area. Martin Amis skimmed us a casual slur in 2011, summing…
Thoughts on Go Set A Watchman
I’ve finished reading Go Set A Watchman.
Whew! What a relief! Now I can read all those reviews, opinion pieces, hot takes and tweets safe in the knowledge that I have read the book, and my opinion, should I choose to comment on an article (I won’t) is somewhat qualified. If anyone ever says to me, ‘Well have you actually read the book?’, I can say, ‘Yes, I read it within a day of release,’ and t…
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