Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Hidden Author

Open Page with Ellen van Neerven

June-July 2015, no. 372 27 May 2015
What drew you to writing? Like most, reading. I spent a lot of time outdoors as a child, playing sport and wandering through bushland. Mum started working in libraries, and during school holidays my brother and I had to sit down quietly in a corner at her work. I read fantasy, classics like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. In my teen years I also consumed a lot of music and wan ... (read more)

Kate Grenville

Reading Australia 11 February 2015
Kate Grenville (1950–) is an award-winning Australia author of fiction, memoir and non-fiction, Kate’s first publication was the short story collection Bearded Ladies (1984). She has gone on to publish a total of thirteen books in the last thirty years including her most recent one, One Life (2015). Several of Kate’s works have been adapted for stage and screen, including Lilian’s Story (1 ... (read more)

Open Page with Alex Miller

October 2009, no. 315 01 October 2009
Why do you write? Writing interests me as nothing else does. It keeps me more or less sane until lunchtime. Are you a vivid dreamer? My dreams desert me at first light, and I struggle to recall them. A trivial event during the day may bring them back. They are obedient to rules I don’t understand. Where are you happiest? Happiness, as inspiration, refuses to be coerced and is always a we ... (read more)

Alex Miller

Reading Australia 20 May 2015
Alex Miller (1936–), is an Australian novelist. His first novel, Watching the Climbers on the Mountain was published in 1988. Since then, he has won many awards for his fiction. He has twice won the Miles Franklin award, for The Ancestor Game (1993) and for Journey to the Stone Country (2003), and also twice won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, for Co ... (read more)

News from the Editor's desk - May 2015

May 2015, no. 371 27 April 2015
Calibre Prize Sophie Cunningham is the winner of this year’s Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay. The judges – Delia Falconer and Peter Rose – chose Ms Cunningham’s essay from a field of almost 100 essays. She receives $5,000 from ABR. Our winner is well known to Australian readers as a former publisher, Editor of Meanjin, and Chair of the Literature Board. She has published two novel ... (read more)

Tim Flannery

Reading Australia 15 April 2015
Tim Flannery is an internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer, and conservationist. He has written over a dozen books, including Here On Earth; the award winning bestsellers The Future Eaters, The Eternal Frontier and The Weather Makers, and accounts of his travels in Papua New Guinea and Australia, Throwim Way Leg, Country and Among the Islands. In 2007 he was named Australian of the Year and ... (read more)

Raimond Gaita

Reading Australia 31 March 2015
Raimond Gaita Raimond Gaita was born in Germany in 1946. He is Emeritus Professor of moral philosophy at Kings College London and a Professorial fellow at the Melbourne Law School and the faculty of Arts of the University of Melbourne. His books have been published in many translations. They include: Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (1991), Romulus, My Father (1998), A Common Humanity, The ... (read more)

News from the Editor's Desk - April 2015

April 2015, no. 370 26 March 2015
Morag Fraser At our AGM in March, Morag Fraser AM left the board after nine years as Chair and twelve years on the board. At a memorable function afterwards, board and staff members paid tribute to our esteemed colleague. Among the tributes published in a small testimonial was this one from Peter Rose: ‘It has been a joy working with you closely. No Editor – no editor intent on effecting chan ... (read more)

Elizabeth Jolley

Reading Australia 24 March 2015
Elizabeth Jolley (photograph by Tanya Young)Elizabeth Jolley AO (4 June 1923–13 February 2007) was an English-born writer who moved to Western Australia in 1959 with her husband Leonard Jolley and their three children. She was fifty-three when her first book, Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories (1976), was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels (including an autobiographical trilogy ... (read more)

Helen Garner

Reading Australia 24 March 2015
Helen Garner (1942–) is an Australian novelist and non-fiction writer. Garner’s first novel, Monkey Grip, was published in 1977 and was adapted for film in 1981. Since then she has written many works of fiction, including The Children’s Bach (1984), Cosmo Cosmolino (1992), and The Spare Room (2008), as well as non-fiction, including The First Stone (1995), Joe Cinque’s Consolation (2004), ... (read more)