Australian Book Review

The ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for short fiction, is now open and closes on April 24, with total prize money of $12,500. In this week’s ABR Podcast, we feature Maria Takolander’s story ‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’, which won ABR’s short story competition in 2010, the year before it was renamed the Jolley Prize. It is one of the best-read features on ABR’s website, which hosts content going back to 1978. ‘A Roānkin Philosophy of Poetry’ is an artful take on academic intrigue and absurdism. Maria Takolander’s story appeared in the December 2010–January 2011 issue of ABR. Listen to Maria Takolander reading her story thirteen years later.

Whereas many look to Vienna for its imperial architecture, the city developed a rich and complex relationship with modernist forms when they exploded across Europe in the early twentieth century. In this week’s ABR Podcast, Christopher Menz, former Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, explains this fascinating aspect of Viennese cultural history – including its surprising connection with Australia. Christopher Menz and ABR Editor Peter Rose will be leading a cultural tour of Vienna from October 13 to 24 for Academy Travel. Listen to Christopher Menz in conversation with Academy Travel’s Stuart Barrie here.

This week we feature the 2013 winner of the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world's leading prizes for a short story written in English. Michelle Michau-Crawford’s ‘Leaving Elvis’ is a story about regret and unlikely heroes, which has ‘echoes of the distinctive elements of Elizabeth Jolley’s own fiction’, according to the 2013 Jolley Prize judges. The 2023 Jolley Prize is currently open for entries. Listen to Michelle Michau-Crawford, a Western Australian writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, read 'Leaving Elvis'.

This week’s ABR Podcast is a special feature on the work and life of one of Australia’s finest poets, Peter Porter (1929-2010). Morag Fraser, currently at work on a biography of Porter, introduces the podcast, setting out the major currents of his life. From there, fifteen poets and critics read from the Porter oeuvre, in all its ‘variety and depth’, explains Fraser, and offer their own memories of the man. Listen to Gig Ryan, Sarah Holland-Batt, Martin Flanagan, John Kinsella, Judith Beveridge and more read from Porter’s making with words.

In this week’s ABR Podcast, Timothy J. Lynch, Professor of American Politics at the University of Melbourne, considers the November 2022 American midterm elections. Lynch finds reason to ‘to be cheerful’, for what voters communicated – more than anything else – was their growing intolerance for a new brand of ideologically driven, conspiratorial politics. Listen to Timothy J. Lynch with ‘Enough already! Post-Trump America returns to the centre’.

Since the May 2022 federal election, several books have been published seeking to explain the rise of the teal independents. In this week’s ABR Podcast, Dennis Altman, a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University, reads his review of three such books. Altman argues that the media’s concern with the teals borders on an ‘obsession’, blinding them to other cross-currents in the Australian political landscape. Listen to Dennis Altman’s ‘Teal Talk: Exaggerating the independents’ revolution’.

In this week’s Podcast we’re delighted to present the five poems shortlisted in the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. This happily alliterative prize was created in 2005 and renamed in 2011, the year after the great poet’s death. Peter Rose introduces our far-flung quintet, who then introduce and read their poems. Further details and illuminating comments on the individual poems by the judges can be found here. We hope you enjoy these wonderful poems. It’s a great way to get to know them before the prize ceremony on Thursday, 19 January.

What has spurred thousands of ordinary women in Iran and throughout the world to take to the streets under the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’? How unprecedented is this recent uprising in the history of Iran’s women’s movement? In this week’s ABR podcast, author-journalist Zoe Holman discusses the distinctive features of this protest and argues that its primary drivers are members of Iran’s Generation Z, who are educated, fearless, and angry. 

This week we draw on ABR’s expanding digital archive and head back to December 2010, when ABR Editor Peter Rose wrote at length about E.M. Forster, author of novels such as Howards End and Room with a View. In this podcast, Rose discusses Wendy Moffat’s biography of Forster, before roaming more widely to revisit those influential novels and dipping into the immense Forster literature – and the even more gargantuan literature of Bloomsbury, of which Forster was a peripheral and somewhat wary member.

This week’s episode of the ABR podcast is devoted to the Books of the Year. With ABR Editor Peter Rose, critic and writer Beejay Silcox and historian Frank Bongiorno discuss the books that stirred them most in 2022. This follows a Books of the Year feature in the December issue of ABR, with contributions from thirty-six writers and critics. Listen to Peter Rose, Beejay Silcox and Frank Bongiorno discuss the best books of 2022.