Hidden Author
Jack Hibberd (1940–) is a Melbourne playwright and doctor. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with a degree in medicine and went on to become a co-founder of the Australian Performing Group (APG). He has written over forty plays, including A Stretch of the Imagination, A Toast to Melba, Slam Dunk, and Legacy, and penned his most famous play, Dimboola, in 1968. Dimboola holds the recor ... (read more)
The Jolley Prize is now worth $12,500
The ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize is the country's foremost short story prize, and we are delighted to be able to present it again in 2016. Generous support from ABR Patron Ian Dickson has enabled us to increase the total prize money from $8,000 to $12,500, of which the overall winner will receive $7,000 rather than $5,000. The runner-up will receive ... (read more)
In this bonus episode of Poem of the Week Peter Rose interviews two past winners of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize – husband and wife Stephen Edgar and Judith Beveridge – about what it is like being poets in a marriage.
Judith Beveridge and Stephen Edgar have both also been recent Poem of the Week guests and their individual episodes are available via the links below.
#6 - J ... (read more)
In 2013 we published Martin Thomas's Calibre Prize-winning essay ‘“Because it’s your country”: Bringing Back the Bones to West Arnhem Land'. This powerful story of the repatriation of Aboriginal bones soon became the best read article on our website and we are delighted to be able to launch the ABR podcast with it. The ABR Podcast is available from iTunes and SoundCloud. You can also ... (read more)
Bennetts Lane Jazz Club hosts Melbourne International Jazz Festival Summer Sessions
Bennetts Lane Jazz Club hosts Melbourne International Jazz Festival Summer Sessions, including the Vince Jones Quartet, and a tribute to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Click here for the full program.
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards
This week, Minister for Creative Industries, Martin Foley, announced t ... (read more)
'BATSHIT BORING BOOKS'
Tim Colebatch's review of my book Catch and Kill: The Politics of Power (November 2015) quotes a comment I made to The Age about not wanting to write 'one of those batshit boring books' about politics. For the record, I was not referring to his biography of Rupert Hamer, which I read and admired. The batshit boring books shall remain nameless. As shall their publisher.
... (read more)
Dust without dimension
The November 13 attacks on ordinary citizens in Paris have outraged and galvanised the world community. We share this sense of revulsion. Australia has a large French population and a rich tradition of Francophilia. Our sympathies go to our French readers and to the families of all the victims.
Words, at such times, are de trop. Not La Marseillaise, though. Advances was st ... (read more)
Prime Minister's Literary Awards
The 2015 PMLA shortlists have been a long time coming, as many authors, booksellers, and publishers will attest. How fitting – after the debacle of 2014 (with its absurdities and subsequent justifications) – that it will be Malcolm Turnbull and not Tony Abbott who will announce the winners of these six lucrative prizes – sometime in December, we understand. ... (read more)
21 Days: An Odyssey
Our survey of neglected novels published in the Fiction issue (September 2015) has attracted much attention. Peter Rose, lauding Rodney Hall's novel Captivity Captive (1988), wrote: 'The book might have been written in a day – one inspired day.' Well, not quite. Rodney Hall, in an email, told our Editor that Captivity Captive was written in twenty-one days. It seems he barel ... (read more)