Hidden Author
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 (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)
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 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
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)
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 (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 (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)
Which poets have most influenced you?
Gertrude Stein, John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Wallace Stevens, e.e. cummings, Marianne Moore, John Cage. Brecht, too, but as theorist rather than poet. I read these poets when I was beginning, as well as Surrealist and Language poets. No one poet of these latter groupings stands out. These days I am more influenced by a poet’s approaches and attitudes than ... (read more)