Hidden Author
Christos Tsiolkas (1965–) is a Melbourne author, playwright, and screen writer. His début novel Loaded (1995) was made into the film Head-On (1998). Since then he has written five novels, including Dead Europe (2005), which won the Age Book of the Year fiction award, The Slap (2008), which won the 2009 Commonwealth Writer's Prize, and Barracuda (2013). The Slap was made into a mini-se ... (read more)
Germaine Greer (1939–), is an Australian academic, author and theorist. She was born in Melbourne, completed an arts degree at Melbourne University in 1959 and a Masters degree at Sydney University in 1962, before going as a Commonwealth Scholar to Newnham College, Cambridge, where in 1967 she wrote her doctorate on Shakespeare's early comedies. In 1970 the publication of The Female Eunuch (1970 ... (read more)
Sophie Cunningham‘Staying with the trouble’ covers very different terrain from that of Martin Thomas’s and Christine Piper’s celebrated Calibre-winning essays: ‘“Because it’s your country”: Bringing Back the Bones to West Arnhem Land’ (2013) and ‘Unearthing the Past’ (2014), which dealt with historical wrongs and biological horrors, respectively. In her essay, Sophie Cunningh ... (read more)
John Romeril (1945–) is a contemporary Australian playwright. He was born in Melbourne and attended Monash University, during which time he wrote his first plays, I Don't Know Who To Feel Sorry For (1969) and Chicago, Chicago (1970). He went on to become a founding member of the Australian Performing Group and he has written over forty works, including scripts for film and television. He has won ... (read more)
Kenneth Slessor (1901–1971) was an Australian poet, war correspondent and journalist. Born in Orange NSW, he began writing poetry as a child with his first publication appearing in the Bulletin. He began his career as a journalist at The Sun in 1920 before later becoming a war correspondent to the Commonwealth in 1940. He was highly critical of poets such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson, pre ... (read more)
Isobelle Carmody (1958- ) is an Australian writer of science fiction, fantasy, children's literature, and young adult literature. She began the first book in the Obernewtyn Chronicles when she was fourteen and continued to work on the series while completing a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in literature and philosophy. While she is perhaps best known for the Obernewtyn Chronicles (now comprising ... (read more)
Thomas Keneally (1935–) is an award-winning Australian novelist and historian.. Keneally won the 1982 Booker Prize for Schindler’s Ark, which would go on to win Oscars as the 1993 film Schindler’s List. Keneally has won the Miles Franklin Award twice for Bring Larks and Heroes in 1967 and Three Cheers for the Paraclete in 1968. Keneally wrote The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith in 1972.
Thomas K ... (read more)
Porter Prize
On 12 May a large audience gathered at the excellent Collected Works bookshop in Melbourne for the announcement of the 2015 Peter Porter Poetry Prize, always a highlight on the ABR calendar (see photographs of the event here). First we heard from several admirers of Peter Porter’s work who read individual poems by him. After the poets or their representatives had introduced and rea ... (read more)
What drew you to writing?
Like most, reading. I spent a lot of time outdoors as a child, playing sport and wandering through bushland. Mum started working in libraries, and during school holidays my brother and I had to sit down quietly in a corner at her work. I read fantasy, classics like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. In my teen years I also consumed a lot of music and wan ... (read more)