Hidden Author
What drew you to writing?
I can’t remember not writing – it is something I have always done. As a teenager I was strongly encouraged by some wonderful teachers and started to become much more serious about it. I have always felt this need, this pressure, to translate experience into language.
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Why do you write?
It’s an excuse to hang around books, which is all I’ve done, one way or another, over the course of my career.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
Yes. It’s like going to the cinema for free every night. I so look forward to it. But they are strictly private screenings.
Where are you happiest?
(1) Reading in bed, with a dog at hand.
(2) In a green place, with warm rain falling. ... (read more)
The Peter Porter Poetry Prize is one of Australia’s most prestigious prizes for a new poem. The Prize – open to all poets writing in English – is named after the great Australian poet Peter Porter (1929–2010). The Prize was first awarded in 2005 (Stephen Edgar) and was renamed in 2011, following Peter Porter’s death. Past winners include Tracy Ryan, Judith Bishop, and Anthony Lawrence.
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Supporting Australian writers
In the May 2015 issue our Editor lamented the low or non-payment of many book reviewers (young ones especially). Peter Rose wrote: ‘The time has come for us all to become better literary citizens – more engaged, more informed, more giving. We’re all involved: publishers, consumers, and writers.’ He committed the magazine to doubling its base rate as soon as p ... (read more)
When did you first write for ABR?
November 2000.
Which critics most impress you?
That’s a really hard question, for there are so many. I recently tried to write a list of critical works that I considered formative: it got very long very quickly. I think John Berger is near the top: I love his lucidity, his careful ethics, and his perceptive responsiveness.
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Christos Tsiolkas (1965–) is a Melbourne author, playwright, and screen writer. His début novel Loaded (1995) was made into the film Head-On (1998). Since then he has written five novels, including Dead Europe (2005), which won the Age Book of the Year fiction award, The Slap (2008), which won the 2009 Commonwealth Writer's Prize, and Barracuda (2013). The Slap was made into a mini-se ... (read more)
Germaine Greer (1939–), is an Australian academic, author and theorist. She was born in Melbourne, completed an arts degree at Melbourne University in 1959 and a Masters degree at Sydney University in 1962, before going as a Commonwealth Scholar to Newnham College, Cambridge, where in 1967 she wrote her doctorate on Shakespeare's early comedies. In 1970 the publication of The Female Eunuch (1970 ... (read more)
Sophie Cunningham‘Staying with the trouble’ covers very different terrain from that of Martin Thomas’s and Christine Piper’s celebrated Calibre-winning essays: ‘“Because it’s your country”: Bringing Back the Bones to West Arnhem Land’ (2013) and ‘Unearthing the Past’ (2014), which dealt with historical wrongs and biological horrors, respectively. In her essay, Sophie Cunningh ... (read more)
John Romeril (1945–) is a contemporary Australian playwright. He was born in Melbourne and attended Monash University, during which time he wrote his first plays, I Don't Know Who To Feel Sorry For (1969) and Chicago, Chicago (1970). He went on to become a founding member of the Australian Performing Group and he has written over forty works, including scripts for film and television. He has won ... (read more)