Advances
Readers’ survey
We tend not to burden our readers with surveys. There are quite enough of them in this solicitous world without our adding to the clamour. But it is time for us to take some soundings: to ask you (readers of all sorts, subscribers or not, lapsed readers or devotees) what you like (or don’t) about the magazine, and how you th ...
Jolley Prize
Late last month, at a lively ceremony held at Gleebooks, David Malouf named Michelle Michau-Crawford’s ‘Leaving Elvis’ as the overall winner of the 2013 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Sto ...
Jolley Prize
This year’s ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize attracted about 1200 entries. They kept busy our three judges: Tony Birch, Terri-ann White, and Maria Takolander, whose new collection of short stories, The Double (Text Publishing) – wh ...
The frozen sea
There was a real sense of occasion at the State Library of Queensland on 15 August when Tony Burke (Minister for the Arts and for Immigration, Multicultural Affairs, and Citizenship) – representing Kevin Rudd – announced the winners of the 2013
Art for everyone
ABR George Hicks Foundation Fellow, Helen ...
Kerryn Goldsworthy wins the Pascall Prize
Advances was delighted to learn that Kerryn Goldsworthy has won the 2013 Pascall Prize ‘Critic of the Year’. Dr Goldsworthy is a frequent contributor to, and former Editor of, ABR; she reviews Lionel Shriver’s new novel in this issue.
... (read more)‘We live in exacting times – or think we do.’ Advances, ever wary of alarmists, was reminded of Peter Steele’s epigram while reading Kerryn Goldsworthy’s article ‘Everyone’s a Critic’, the fruit of her ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship, which we are delighted to be able to publish in this issue.
We are all familiar with facile notions that criticism is dead, or incurably futile; that long-form journalism is a defunct (or miraculously recent) school; that critics themselves are woefully biddable, incestuous creatures. Dr Goldsworthy – a former Editor of ABR – dubs this the ‘decline polemic’. Her article, based on a survey of sixteen leading reviewers and literary editors, examines these anxieties and points to new forms, new freedoms, new opportunities.
There can be no doubt, though, that book reviewing faces many challenges. Miniscule space in some newspapers; no space at all in others; the valorising of online verdicts from anyone who can negotiate a keyboard; sloppy critical practices: these are just some of the hazards that exercise the minds of Dr Goldsworthy’s subjects, and many others.
... (read more)Martin Thomas wins Calibre
Martin Thomas is the winner of the seventh Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay, worth $5000. The judges – Morag Fraser and Peter Rose – chose his essay from a field of about 150 entries. Dr Thomas’s essay, ‘
We give you ABR Online! By now readers will have heard the whispers about our new website, the unveiling of which is imminent. Our electronic home will be much easier to use and more pleasant to read. We want to make the experience of browsing through ABR Online as close as possible to flipping through the m ...
Poetry and ABR
ABR is delighted to announce that David McCooey, a celebrated poet and frequent contributor to the magazine, is our new Poetry Editor. Professor McCooey, who was re ...