Archive
When did you start reading ABR?
That must have been in the mid-1980s (so long ago!). I was running the marketing department at Oxford University Press in Melbourne. A certain future ABR Editor was right next door, marketing the science and medical books. During my years at OUP, the Editor at ABR I had most to do with was Rosemary Sorensen.
... (read more)This splash of books demonstrates that the vigorous publishing for the young adult market embraces subjects as varied as mental illness, bullying, sleuthing in medieval times, crime in the present, defending an occupied Australia and two dead mothers; and is written across the genres of realism, fantasy and historical fiction. But how much is enticing to the adolescent reader?
... (read more)There is lots of movement in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, with the appointment of Brian Castro as Professor of Creative Writing. Castro, whose novels include Birds of Passage (1983) and Shanghai Dancing (2003), becomes the third person to hold this rare chair in Creative Writing. Tom Shapcott held it for many years, and was followed by Nicholas Jose, who has just been appointed to the chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University, which he will take up in 2009. Creative Writing is clearly in vogue at Adelaide: Sydney poet Jill Jones, formerly of the Literature Board of the Australia Council, and a frequent contributor to ABR, has been lured there. Brian Castro, interviewed in the Australian on 30 April, recalled that when he studied English literature at the University of Sydney in the early 1970s, one writer came to talk to the students, only to remark, ‘You should be home writing’. Gone are the days.
... (read more)Captain Charles, Engineer of Charity: The remarkable life of Charles Gordon O’Neill by Stephen Utick
One of the National Library’s newest treasures, and probably its most significant acquisition in the past twelve months, is a small theatre playbill printed in Sydney and dated 30 July 1796. At 211 years old, it is the earliest surviving document printed in Australia. The playbill was presented by the prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, to the then prime minister of Australia, John Howard, at a ceremony held at Parliament House on 12 September 2007. It advertises performances of three plays at the ‘Theatre, Sydney’: Jane Shore; The Wapping Landlady; and The Miraculous Cure.
... (read more)Meanjin, Vol. 66, No. 4 & Vol. 67, No. 1 edited by Ian Britain & Griffith Review 20 edited by Julianne Schultz
Patrick Allington (May 2008) astutely discerned an essential characteristic – I consider it a flaw – of The Best Australian Political Writing 2008, which was edited by Tony Jones of the ABC. He did not quite nail it down, however: I think that the book would have been better described as the ‘best’ political journalism because that, overwhelmingly, is what it really is (furthermore, it is exclusively print journalism). It completely lacks academic, or what one might term ‘reflective’, writing. That is part of the reason why, as Allington correctly insisted, some of the pieces are dated and, indeed, remain rather flat on the page.
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