August 2018, issue no. 403

Peter Porter Poetry Prize now open

Deadline for our $8,500 prize is 3 December, 2018.

2018 Jolley Prize shortlist

ABR is delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2018 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize: 'Vasco' by Claire Aman; 'Between the Mountain and the Sea' by Sharmini Aphrodite; and 'Ruins' by Madelaine Lucas.

Conflict in the Early Colony

Alan Atkinson reviews 'The Sydney Wars' by Stephen Gapps

Open Page with Rose Tremain

Our guest for Open Page this issue is author and short story writer Rose Tremain.

Fields of the Past

Marilyn Lake reviews 'Best We Forget' by Peter Cochrane.

Complete our reader survey and win prizes

Please help us to improve the magazine by completing our reader survey. You will be in the running to win one of two five-year subscriptions to ABR Online.

An Open Letter on the ABC

ABR shares many Australians’ concerns about the health and viability of the ABC. The threats are myriad and sustained.

'We Are All MFAs Now!'

Beejay Silcox on the politics and polemics surrounding creative-writing MFAs

Welcome to the August Fiction issue of ABR! Highlights include:

• Review of the Month: Marilyn Lake reviews Peter Cochrane’s Best We Forget
• ABR Fortieth Birthday Fellow Beejay Silcox on MFA culture
• The 2018 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist
• Historian Alan Atkinson on The Sydney Wars by Stephen Gapps
• Jen Webb on Ryan O’Neill’s new satire The Drover’s Wives
• Shannon Burns on Sam Twyford-Moore’s memoir The Rapids
• Dorothy Driver on Sisonke Msimang’s memoir Always Another Country
• Interviews with legendary Australian publisher Carmen Callil, and author Rose Tremain

Highlights from the current issue

Gideon Haigh reviews 'Bullshit Jobs: A theory' by David Graeber

Gideon Haigh

Recently I solicited impressions of his job from the new head of external affairs at a big financial organisation. What had struck him first was the manpower at his disposal. The total hea More

Carolyn Holbrook reviews 'The Battle Within: POWs in postwar Australia' by Christina Twomey

Carolyn Holbrook

The director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, recently announced plans for a $500 million underground expansion of the memorial. In justifying the expenditure, Nelson claime More

'We are all MFAs now!' by Beejay Silcox

Beejay Silcox

‘Creative writing is, in sum, as American as baseball, apple pie and homicide.’

Mark McGurl, The Program Era (2009)

My rejection from the Iowa Writers ... More

Brenda Niall reviews 'Rosie: Scenes from a vanished life' by Rose Tremain

Brenda Niall

‘Write about what you don’t know,’ British novelist Rose Tremain advised young authors. That has been her own strategy during a long and star-studded career. It is quite a stretch fr More