Situated in the context of other seminal queer texts, these pieces are a “kind of memoir”, Belcourt writes, that “stretch well beyond the boundaries my personal life”.
What sets The Labyrinth apart, though, is both the beauty and simplicity of Lohrey’s writing and the magnitude of the tragedy that has caused her narrator, Erica, to flee Sydney for a tiny coastal town.
“My people are proud, strong people. We are the descendants of Mannelargenna of the Pairrrebeenne / Trawlwoolway clan,” Aunty Patsy Cameron writes to introduce her generous tale of the environment and traditions that have shaped her life and kin.
If you want to motivate your kids (aged 4 and up) to be eco activists – try The Tale of the Whale. It’s a clarion call to us all to think about our oceans and their creatures and to stop our seas being the garbage tips for our over-indulgent lifestyles.
Authors Ruth Balint and Julie Kalman are associate professors, at the University of New South Wales and Monash University respectively. They are also both the children of European refugees and have taught and researched extensively on migration issues.
Author Irma Gold was inspired by a newspaper piece about an oil-drenched Magellanic penguin chick that washed up on an island outside Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and was rescued by an islander named Joao who named him Dindim.
Welcome to Consent is a new book by adolescent health experts Yumi Stynes and Dr Melissa Kang, and it is timely, given disclosures by Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame, the removal of the federal government’s “milkshake” ad, and the Women’s March 4 Justice on March 15.
The lush collage art this in picture book is a delight – adding whimsy and gentleness to a tender tale of empathy, kindness and care for the environment, and how to draw on the strengths of others to overcome your fears.
On Sunday, May 2, Carly Findlay, editor of Growing Up Disabled in Australia, spoke to an attentive audience at the 2021 Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF). Our reviewer, Melinda Kearns, offers insights here about the session and the book.
Two years after his widely acclaimed One Hundred Years of Dirt, journalist Rick Morton has produced another gritty but inspiring work, My Year of Living Vulnerably.
In many of Ishiguro’s novels, his protagonists are not quite telling us the truth, or are perhaps, telling us only their perspective on what occurs around them.
Western Australian of the Year, Dr Helen Milroy, has written and illustrated The Emu Who Ran Through the Sky, released in April, an exciting story for 5-10 year-olds about working together and finding the courage to be different.
In the crucible of Australia’s Black Summer Danielle Celermajer pondered the personal and broader implications of the climate catastrophe. Her book Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future offers new language and concepts to help us tackle it.
The Breaking by award-winning author and editor, Irma Gold, was released on March 1. In this Q&A she offers insights into her debut novel’s central love story and how we can stop the harm done to elephants through tourism.
All Our Shimmering Skies, like Trent Dalton's first novel and runaway best seller Boy Swallows Universe, is often gritty, violent and harrowing – but his luminous prose makes it a compelling read.
Malcolm Knox is best known as a journalist, columnist and former literary editor for the Sydney Morning Herald, but he is also the author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Life Bound is Marian Matta’s debut collection of short stories – and it’s a beauty. Earthy characters, evocative settings, and intriguing plotlines make these 16 stories sing from the page.
The Beauty in Breaking is a beautifully written and thoughtful memoir. The author moves between her childhood and the daily dramas of her hospital work, interspersed with deep insights into pain, trauma, healing, forgiveness and love.
Grenville has used her imagination to fill in the details of how the historical figure, Elizabeth Macarthur, may have thought and acted in A Room Made of Leaves, her fourth in a series of colonial novels, beginning with A Secret River in 2005.
Grenville has used her imagination to fill in the details of how the historical figure, Elizabeth Macarthur, may have thought and acted in A Room Made of Leaves, her fourth in a series of colonial novels, beginning with A Secret River in 2005.
Author Patrik Svensson describes The Gospel of the Eels as a “strange and nerdy book”. He isn’t wrong; his book (subtitled “A father, a son and the world’s most enigmatic fish”) is part memoir and part natural history with musings on other topics (the birth of the modern environmental movement and the meaning of miracles, for example) skillfully interwoven.
While published well before Covid-19 reached Australia, this book – subtitled On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark, is a timely read for this global pandemic.
This is Happiness intrigued me with its title. Was the title sarcastic, a gibe at the miseries of an impoverished rural Ireland? Or was I about to read a twee tale of a mythical, pastoral, romantic Ireland?
Isla’s Family Tree is a delightfully conceived picture book that features a little girl who can’t see how the twins her heavily pregnant mother is carrying will fit into her family.
Poet-naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield’s fourth collection, Toward Antarctica, (Red Hen Press), is an insider’s love letter to one of the world’s most iconic wild places, and I found it unique, moving and brilliantly informative.
A deep sense of loss permeates the first part of The Dutch House; the rest of the novel details how the ensuing grief shapes the lives of protagonist Danny, and his older sister Maeve.
Bakarra (long-necked turtles), jinma (bull sharks), and gundhurru (olive pythons) are three of the ten animals children will love counting as they turn the pages of Jill Daniels's Counting Our Country.
In a summer of catastrophic bushfires, devastating loss of life, and relentless political slyness Vicki Hastrich’s Night Fishing: Stingrays, Goya and the Singular Life is a book of solace.
These two books use evocative imagery and few words to tackle human and inhuman reactions to migration – and illustrating their consequences to younger readers.
I seem to be in a Russian zone at present; having never read anything by Tolstoy, I began the year with War and Peace and was so impressed that I turned to the (slightly) shorter novel, Anna Karenina, written between 1874 and 1876.
This strange and unsettling novel begins with its protagonist driving and hitting something on Lawson Street, outside Redfern station. When he returns later, the blood on the road convinces him it really happened. But where is his victim?
