Gina Mercer enjoys a three-stranded career as writer, teacher, and editor. She has taught creative writing and literature in universities and communities for thirty years. She was Managing Editor of Island magazine, 2006–10. She has published a novel, Parachute Silk (Spinifex Press, 2001) and two academic books (UQP, 1994; Peter Lang, New York, 2001).
Gina has published five collections of poet ... (read more)
Hidden Author
Jim Everett-puralia meenamatta was born at Flinders Island, Tasmania in 1942. He is from the clan plangermairreenner of the Ben Lomond people, a clan of the Cape Portland nation in north-east Tasmania. His working life includes fifteen years at sea as a fisherman and merchant seaman, the Australian Regular Army for three years, and over fifty years formal involvement in the Aboriginal Struggle. He ... (read more)
James Charlton graduated from the University of Tasmania, and from Flinders University and the University of Cambridge. He was Poetry Editor of Island magazine and Advisory Editor for Australasia of Chautauqua Literary Journal, published in upstate New York. Charlton earned his PhD from the University of Tasmania and his MA from the University of Cambridge. He is a poet and theological writer with ... (read more)
Peter Rose spoke to Beejay Silcox, recipient of Australian Book Review Fortieth Birthday Fellowship, about developments at ABR since the revival of the magazine's second series in 1978. Beejay also discusses her Fellowship essay, 'Defying the moment', an engaging in-depth look at Australian magazine culture featuring interviews with several leading editors: Jonathan Green (Meanjin), Nick Feik (The ... (read more)
Recent ABR Arts reviews
Lee Christofis reviews La Bayadère (Queensland Ballet) ★★1/2
Ian Dickson reviews The Children (Sydney Theatre Company / Melbourne Theatre Company) ★★★★
Jane Clark reviews Colony: Australia 1770-1861 / Frontier Wars (National Gallery of Victoria)
Ian Dickson reviews The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Sydney Theatre Company) ★★★
Melbourne I ... (read more)
John Hawke, Morag Fraser, Nicholas Wong, and Peter RoseNicholas Wong is the winner of the 2018 Peter Porter Poetry Prize, now worth a total of $8,500. This is Australia’s premier prize for an original poem. Louis Klee, the 2017 winner, made the announcement at a special event at fortyfivedownstairs on Monday, 19 March. Nicholas Wong, who flew from Hong Kong to attend the Porter ceremony, receive ... (read more)
Anne Kellas’s third collection – The White Room Poems (Walleah Press, 2015) – was shortlisted for the Margaret Scott Prize in the 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary awards. Written with the support of an Australia Council grant, it also received a Blue Giraffe Press poetry award. Isolated States, supported by an Arts Tasmania grant, was published by Tim Thorne’s Cornford Press (2001), whi ... (read more)
Each year, ABR’s prestigious Calibre Essay Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for a new essay, attracts some of the finest writers from Australia and overseas.
Last year, the first prize of $5,000 was awarded to Michael Adams, an associate professor of Human Geography at the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research at the University of Wollongong. Before that, Michael worke ... (read more)
101, Taipei
after the Mandopop song ‘Centrifugal Force’ (Yang Naiwen, 2016)
Happiness in wanting to say something but not saying it. I want to sayhappiness in a way others cannot. You look up at my blue-green glass,double-paned and glazed, and think we, even when someonejumps, are never on the sane page. Of course, I look likea huge magic wand that grows a sad rose. Yes, the roseis dyed, at ... (read more)
Cath Kenneally is an Adelaide poet and novelist whose book Around Here (Wakefield Press, 2002) won the John Bray National Poetry Prize. Of her six volumes of poetry, the latest is eaten cold (Walleah Press, 2013), in which each poem responds to one in the volume Cold Snack (AUP) by Auckland poet Janet Charman. Kenneally’s two novels are Room Temperature and Jetty Road (both Wakefield Press). She ... (read more)