The Writer Laid Bare: Mastering emotional honesty in a writer’s art, craft and life mingles memoir with writerly guidance – the latter fired in the crucible of Lee Kofman's experience and shaped through a lifetime of reading.
Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House is a book she describes as a “companion” (the term “sequel” is avoided by both Egan and publicists) to her 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. Several of Goon Squad’s characters reappear, among them Lou Kline, Bennie Salazar, Sasha, Lincoln and Lulu.
If there is one overarching message from The Urge, it is just that: Addiction is complex; quick fixes and slogans are irrelevant; its causes are both societal and individual, and there is no one-size-fits-all treatment model.
Layers, liminal spaces and secretions are Permafrost’s groundwater. The mood of these short stories is closer to the broody greyness of a Scottish loch than the glittering seas of SJ Norman’s home country, Australia.
In Matrix, Lauren Groff is exploring and exploiting all the complicated implications of its title, including one of the word’s archaic meanings as womb and, by extension, mother.
Losing a beloved family member is never easy, but what’s it like when your mother is brutally murdered – by your father? Amani Haydar writes about this in The Mother Wound which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction 2022.
Reading picture books to your child gives them windows to different worlds outside of home. It also creates special memories and allows their concentration span, listening and language skills to develop.
Whether you are a long-term Patchett fan, or are just meeting her for the first time, These Precious Days is a gem of a book, moving without being saccharine.
Staff from Better Read than Dead bookshop in Newtown have negotiated to secure better working conditions with help from the RAFFWU (Retail and Fast Food Workers Union) and strong support from locals and Australia’s literary community.
In Once There Were Wolves, as in her previous novel Migrations, Sydney-based author Charlotte McConaghy weaves skilful storytelling with a fiery passion to convey the urgent environmental issues of the moment.
After more than a year, staff of Better Read than Dead bookshop in Newtown continue to negotiate to secure better working conditions through a new enterprise agreement.
Vincent Namatjira was 18 when he returned from being fostered in Perth to live with extended family in the desert in Ntaria (Hermannsburg) in the Northern Territory. It was here that he learned he was the great-grandson of the famous Albert Namatjira. ...
Climate change, the fate of a now extinct Bronze Age culture, the rise of right-wing politics and global injustice also make their appearance in the detailed electronic epistles of the two women in Sally Rooney’s third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You.
“In a snowy mountain village, my family had lived peacefully for hundreds of years ...” – so begins Karen Hendriks’ new picture book for children aged 7 and upwards and inspired inspired by the author’s mother, grandmother and great grandmother.
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.
Lockdown getting you down? Cabin fever hemming you in? These wild and wonderful books can transport you to parts of the world their authors have explored and explain beautifully.
“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.
