Our fairy Grandmother
Meet the author — possibly Australia’s most popular
children's writer — whom you’ve probably never heard of.
Write at the centre
Melbourne has been named a City of Literature by UNESCO. But what does that mean for the city's writers and readers - and its library?
Fly by nights
They were ordinary men by day, heroes by night. Michael Veitch shares his fascination with the flyboys of WWII with Lou Robson.
By the book
Obscure titles, imperious customers, foolish shoplifters, lonely guys - Melbourne's independent booksellers talk about about life on literature's front line.
Drawn to trouble
Philip Gourevitch's book Standard Operating Procedure shows the
analytical skills he once applied to Rwandan genocide now at work
on Abu Ghraib.
Cancer of 20th-century Russia
Jane Sullivan recalls the starkness of Solzhenitsyn in an English summer.
From Russia with love of art and words
Anya Ulinich has embraced the written word
Children's author is on a roll
Creativity can strike at any moment. For children's author Aaron Blabey it was on an interstate flight. Caught short of paper, Blabey scribbled down the bones of a story on the back of his boarding pass.
The accidental novelist
A truant hound inspired Michelle de Kretser's Man Booker-nominated novel about migration, family and unrequited love.
Byng blasts Booker over Garner
Publisher Jamie Byng gets up a head of steam about Helen Garner and the Booker longlist.
Crossing the final frontier
The latest Vincent Buckley prize winner, David Wheatley, is on a
mission to bring poetry to the people with his compositions on beer
mats.
Bouquet tarnished
Why a lavish marriage ceremony in an otherwise pragmatic age?
Reading the act writing
Making a story beautiful or true depends not just on its being told but the way it is told.
Once upon a lifetime
Writers grow old, wrestling with tales that cry out to be told. In the lead-up to the Melbourne Writers Festival, seven participants trace the seven ages of storytelling.
Love and socialism on revolution's factory floor
The author of a frank new memoir of life in 1980s China still
laments some aspects of her life.
BOOK REVIEWS
Life In Seven Mistakes
Susan Johnson's new novel is a compelling look at relationships.
I Dream of Magda
The winner of last year's Vogel award is a genuine talent and his
winning novel a tragi-comedy that oozes style.
Dear Gabriel: Letter to an Autistic Son
The frankness of a father's account of his son's life is its
strength.
One Foot Wrong
It's the pitch-perfect narrative voice in this deceptive novel that impresses Louise Swinn.
Novel About My Wife
Unreliable narrator, reliable writer - Emily Perkins attains
novelistic maturity.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
This looks at the vile Victorian-era killing of a child that
had ramifications in real life and in the pages of detective
fiction.
The Return of History and the End of Dreams
Despite its shortcomings, this is bound to be part of the foreign
policy debate in the lead-up to the US presidential election.
Bright Air
Barry Maitland takes a while to hit his straps, but boy, does he
hit them.
