ABR Behrouz Boochani Fellowship
Hessom Razavi was the recipient of the 2020 ABR Behrouz Boochani Fellowship. The Fellowship, worth $10,000, honoured the artistry, courage, and moral leadership of Behrouz Boochani, the award-winning author of No Friend But the Mountains (2018). Dr Razavi made a significant contribution to the magazine in 2020 with a series of three substantial articles on refugees, statelessness, and human rights.
ABR Patrons Fellowship
Felicity Plunkett is the recipient of the 2019 ABR Patrons’ Fellowship, worth $10,000. Felicity has been a frequent contributor to the magazine since 2010 and was a past Fellow (2015). A poet, critic, teacher, and editor, Felicity was chosen from a large field and will contribute several articles to ABR over the course of the year.
ABR Fortieth Birthday Fellowship
Beejay Silcox is the recipient of the ABR Fortieth Birthday Fellowship worth $10,000. Beejay, who first wrote for us in 2016, has quickly become a regular in our pages, and elsewhere. She will contribute several articles and review essays in 2018, commencing with a survey of magazine culture in our 400th issue (April).
ABR Gender Fellowship
Author and academic Marguerite Johnson is the 2017 ABR Gender Fellow. Her Fellowship essay ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock fifty years on’ looks at Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, drawing on studies of gender and sexuality, Australian art, and Classics. The ABR Gender Fellowship is worth $7,500. Her essay appeared in the December 2017 issue of ABR. The Fellowship is funded by ABR Patron Emeritus Professor Anne Edwards.
ABR RAFT Fellowship
Elisabeth Holdsworth is the 2017 ABR RAFT Fellow. Her essay 'If This Is a Jew' explores the nature of Progressive Judaism as practised in Australia, Israel, and the United States. Her essay appeared in the November 2017 Arts issue of ABR. The Fellowship is supported by the Religious Advancement Foundation Trust.
ABR Eucalypt Fellowship
Adelaide novelist and essayist Stephen Orr is the 2017 ABR Eucalypt Fellow. Stephen Orr’s essay 'Ambassadors from Another Time' explores the way the eucalypt 'flourishes from Tasmania to the Philippines, how it has colonised poor soils, provided food for the First Australians, images for May Gibbs’s garden sketches, but also informed a sense of isolation about lost children, and terror in the burnt-out cars left in the wake of Ash Friday.' Stephen Orr's Fellowship essay appeared in the 2017 October Environment issue of ABR. The Eucalypt Fellowship is supported by Eucalypt Australia and the ABR Patrons.
ABR Patrons' Fellowship
Philip Jones is the ABR Patrons’ Fellow. His essay titled ‘Beyond Songlines’ is revisionist article of considerable importance examining the Bruce Chatwin phenomenon thirty years on – Jones is widely regarded as one of the country’s leading ethnographers and anthropologists. The essay was published in the September 2017 issue of Australian Book Review. We are able to fund this Fellowship with support from our many supporters. We thank all our Patrons.
ABR RAFT Fellowship
Alan Atkinson, one of Australia's most distinguished and lauded historians, is the recipient of the inaugural ABR RAFT Fellowship. The Fellowship is funded by the Religious Advancement Foundation Trust and is intended to consider the role and significance of religion in society and culture. Alan Atkinson's essay, 'How Do We Live With Ourselves? The Australian National Conscience', was published in the September 2016 issue of Australian Book Review.
ABR Laureate's Fellowship
Sydney poet Michael Aiken was the inaugural ABR Laureate's Fellow, chosen by ABR Laureate David Malouf. Michael Aiken used his Fellowship to write an extended narrative poem in the epic tradition. Entitled 'Satan Repentant', this is a book-length poem about revenge, resentment, and remorse. ABR published a long extract from the poem in its August 2016 issue. Michael Aiken's first collection, A Vicious Example (Grand Parade 2014), was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize. His poetry and prose have appeared in journals in Australia and overseas. This Fellowship is possible because of the generosity of ABR Patrons.
ABR Dahl Trust Fellowship
Award-winning author Ashley Hay is the 2015 ABR Dahl Trust Fellow. Her long article, ‘The Forest at the Edge of Time’ examines ‘what our mongrel trees tell us about our past, the present, and the future’. It appears in this year’s Environment issue. Ashley Hay has published several books, including Gum: The Story of Eucalypts and Their Champions (2002), The Railwayman’s Wife (2013), which won the Colin Roderick Award, and (as editor) Best Australian Science Writing 2014. This is the second ABR Fellowship to be funded by the Bjarne K. Dahl Trust.
ABR Patrons’ Fellowship
The third ABR Patrons’ Fellowship was for a substantial article on any topic. Shannon Burns was appointed in November 2014. His article, entitled ‘The Scientist of his own experience: A profile of Gerald Murnane’, in the August 2015 issue, combines investigative journalism, critical analysis, and literary and historical research to profile award-winning novelist Gerald Murnane.
ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship
The third ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship was for a substantial article on any topic. James McNamara was appointed in November 2014. His essay, entitled ‘The Golden Age of Television?’, considers the ascendancy of television drama and its cultural significance. The article was the main feature in our inaugural Film and Television issue in April 2015.
ABR Dahl Trust Fellowship
Australian Book Review congratulates the recipient of the ABR Dahl Trust Fellowship, Danielle Clode, for her essay: ‘Seeing the Wood for the Trees’. Clode’s essay examines the representation of eucalypt forests in Australian culture and the implications this has for debates over forest resources. This is the first ABR Fellowship to be funded by the Bjarne K. Dahl Trust.
ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship
The second ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship was for a substantial article on any aspect of the performing arts. Andrew Fuhrmann was appointed in May 2013 and his article ‘Patrick White: A theatre of his own’ was published in our November 2013 issue. In it Fuhrmann examines the plays of Patrick White and his influence on contemporary theatre.
ABR George Hicks Foundation Fellowship
The ABR George Hicks Foundation Fellowship was for a substantial article with a focus on the visual arts. Helen Ennis was the seventh fellow and her article (‘Olive Cotton at Spring Forest’) was the main feature of the 2013 July-August Art issue. In her article Ennis offers a fascinating reading of the great modernist photographer's second marriage and gradual re-emergence as a photographer in the latter decades of her life.
ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship
The ABR Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship was for a substantial article with a literary studies focus. Kerryn Goldsworthy was the sixth Fellow. Goldsworthy is a former Editor of ABR and one of Australia’s most prolific and respected critics. In her article, titled ‘Everyone’s a Critic’, Goldsworthy examines the current state of book reviewing in Australia, online and off. ABR published the article in May 2013.
ABR Patrons’ Fellowship
The second ABR Patrons’ Fellowship was for a substantial article with a film, media, or TV focus. Ruth Starke was the fifth Fellow. Starke’s project, titled ‘Media Don’, focuses on the resilient and charismatic South Australian politician Don Dunstan, a long-serving premier who skilfully used the media to fashion his persona and perpetuate his influence, but who in the end was brought down by it. Starke, who used the extensive resources of the Don Dunstan Collection held by the Flinders University Library Special Collections, also sheds light on the private man. Her article is published in the March 2013 issue of ABR.
ABR Copyright Agency Fellowship
The ABR Copyright Agency Fellowship was part of ABR’s Asian project, with the generous support of Copyright Agency through its Cultural Fund. Jennifer Lindsay was the fourth Fellow. Lindsay wrote a profile of the Indonesian writer Goenawan Mohamad – activist, journalist, editor, essayist, poet, commentator, theatre director, and playwright – whose essays she has been translating for two decades. The profile, 'Man on the Margins', in the October 2012 issue of ABR, focuses on the man and his work, but provides an understanding of the context in which Goenawan Mohamad writes and of the complexities of Indonesia.
ABR Sidney Myer Fund Fellowship
This ABR Sidney Myer Fund Fellowship was for a substantial article with an Indigenous focus. Felicity Plunkett was the third Fellow. Her project was titled ‘Sound Bridges: A Profile of Gurrumul’, a profile of this internationally acclaimed Indigenous artist and his reception. Her essay is published in the June-July 2015 issue of ABR.
Plunkett is a freelance writer, critic, and lecturer. She has a BA (Hons) and PhD (Sydney) in Literature. She is the current Poetry Editor of the University of Queensland Press, which recently published her anthology, Thirty Australian Poets. She has taught in several Australian universities and has often written for ABR.
ABR Sidney Myer Fund Fellowship
This ABR Sidney Myer Fund Fellowship was for a substantial article with a literary studies focus. Rachel Buchanan was the second Fellow. She is a lecturer in Journalism at La Trobe University, Melbourne, holds a Phd in History from Monash University, and has worked as a journalist for The Age. She is the author of The Parihaka Album: Lest We Forget (2009).
Rachel's long article on archival uses of private papers appears in the December 2011– January 2012 issue of the magazine. In ‘Sweeping up the Ashes’, she investigates the politics and purposes of collecting personal papers at a time when writers, collectors, and institutions are caught between the mystique and permanence of material made by hand and the banality and fragility of machine-made works.
ABR Patrons’ Fellowship
The first ABR Patrons’ Fellowship was for a substantial article with a literary studies focus. Patrick Allington was the inaugural Fellow. Allington’s project was a critique of the Miles Franklin (‘What is Australia Anyway?: The Glorious Limitations of the Miles Franklin Literary Award’). In an article in the June 2011 issue of ABR, he reflects on the Award’s history, strengths, quirks, and past controversies, and fascinatingly, elicits comments from some of the major authors whose works have been excluded from consideration because they don’t ‘present Australian Life in any of its phases’.