Open Page
Jennifer Mills is the author of the novels The Airways (Picador, 2021), Dyschronia (Picador, 2018), Gone (UQP, 2011), and The Diamond Anchor (UQP, 2009) and a collection of short stories, The Rest Is Weight (UQP, 2012).
... (read more)
Laura Elizabeth Woollett is the author of The Love of a Bad Man (Scribe, 2016) and Beautiful Revolutionary (Scribe, 2018). She was the City of Melbourne’s 2020 Boyd Garret writer-in-residence and is a 2020–22 Marten Bequest Scholar for Prose. The Newcomer (Scribe, 2021) is her latest novel.
... (read more)
Larissa Behrendt is the author of three novels: Home, which won the 2002 David Unaipon Award and the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book; Legacy, which won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; and After Story (2021). She has published numerous books on Indigenous legal issues; her most recent non-fiction book is Finding Eliza: Power and colonial storytelling. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year. She is Distinguished Professor at the Jumbunna Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.
... (read more)
Stan Grant is the ABC’s international affairs analyst and Vice-Chancellor’s chair of Australian-Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University. He won the 2015 Walkley Award for his coverage of Indigenous affairs and is the author of On Thomas Keneally, The Australian Dream, Australia Day, The Tears of Strangers, and Talking to My Country.
... (read more)Krissy Kneen is the award-winning author of fiction, poetry, and memoir, including An Uncertain Grace, Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Wintering, Eating My Grandmother, and Affection. Her latest book is the memoir The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen. She has written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC Television.
... (read more)I’ve been fortunate to work with talented editors like Sally Heath (formerly with MUP and now with Thames & Hudson) and more recently with Chris Feik and Kirstie Innes-Will at Black Inc. I’d be lost without their close reading of my work and their suggestions for improvement. As Chris says, skilful editing helps to make any book the best version of itself.
... (read more)I enjoy critics who read beyond the content of the book to discuss what they think the book or author is trying to achieve. Even better if they discover that the book does something the author wasn’t expecting or didn’t deliberately plan.
... (read more)
The use of the word ‘learnings’ should be an offence punishable by death. On the other hand, fine old Australian words like ‘lair’, ‘cove’, and ‘skite’ are long overdue for a comeback. ‘Crapulous’, a wonderful synonym for hungover, is pretty good too.
... (read more)
I appreciate critics who enter into a conversation with a book and who draw upon curiosity, wonder, and deep thinking to judge. Maria Tumarkin writes magnificently about writers and books.
... (read more)
I’m always little uneasy about the edge of élitism underlying the policing of language, but I have to confess to a loathing for psychological banalities like ‘closure’ and ‘unconditional love’, most of which are actually worse than meaningless.
... (read more)