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Amy Baillieu
Amy Baillieu is Deputy Editor of Australian Book Review. She completed a Masters of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne in 2011 and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the same university with majors in English Literature and French. Prior to becoming Deputy Editor of ABR in 2012, she worked in other editorial roles at the magazine and was Philanthropy Manager from 2011–12. Amy chaired the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize judging panel from 2014–17. She regularly reviews fiction for ABR and also works as a freelance editor.
‘If you think you know what this collection will be like, you’re wrong,’ Carmen Maria Machado (author of the brilliant Her Body and Other Parties, 2017) states on the back cover of Kristen Roupenian’s provocatively titled début, You Know You Want This. It is an unusual description of a short story collection from an emerging author, but Roupenian is not your average débutante. She is the ... (read more)
Robbie Arnott’s Flames is an exuberantly creative and confident début. Set in an alternate Tasmania, Flames’s kaleidoscopic narrative crackles with energy and imagination. This is a world of briefly reincarnating women, gin-swigging private detectives, wombat farms, malevolent cormorants, elementals and nature gods, fishermen who form lifelong bonds with seals, and coffee-table books about co ... (read more)
After reading her début novel about Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland, no one is likely to pick up a book by Hannah Kent expecting a frothy comedy set in a sun-drenched contemporary location, but even for the author of Burial Rites (2013) this compelling new historical novel ventures into grim and shadowy territory.
The Good People was inspired by an article about a ... (read more)
Set in an unsettlingly convincing near future, James Bradley’s fourth novel, Clade, opens with climate scientist Adam Leith walking along an Antarctic coastline reflecting on the state of the world and on his relationship with his partner, Ellie. After six years together, their relationship is under pressure as Ellie undergoes fertility treatment. Adam is ambivalent about bringing a child into a ... (read more)
There are some writers whose style is so distinctive they can be identified from a single paragraph. Sydney writer Debra Adelaide is more of a chameleon. Letter to George Clooney is Adelaide’s first short story collection. She has previously written three novels and edited several anthologies. Her first novel, The Hotel Albatross (1995), is the meandering tale of a couple trying to run a country ... (read more)
The latest Sleepers Almanac opens with a surreal encounter between a suave cane toad, presented as an amphibian Jiminy Cricket, and the guilt-wracked mother of a drug addict (‘Happy Monday’), and ends with the elaborate imaginings of a woman trying to distract herself from the reason why she is sitting in a hospital waiting room (‘How to Talk to a Fire Extinguisher’). Other themes echoing ... (read more)
The beauty and danger of the ocean and its unpredictable nature have long been fertile subjects for artists and writers, and the sea a popular and potent metaphor. In Favel Parrett’s trim, lyrical début novel Past the Shallows, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award,the sea is once again symbolic. In fact, nearly everything in this novel feels symbolic, sometimes distractingly so.
... (read more)
Eleven Seasons is an impressive début novel from this year’s Vogel Prize winner, Paul D. Carter. A nimble and understated coming-of-age story, it takes its rhythm and structure from football, but encompasses so much more. Over the course of the eponymous eleven seasons, Carter follows Jason’s progress from a forlorn, yearning boy into an adult, while exploring issues of identity, belonging, f ... (read more)
Although private patronage and the arts have been linked for centuries, cultural philanthropy has not typically been associated with literature in the same way that it is with art galleries, libraries, museums, and performing arts companies. But this is changing. Since we launched our Patrons Program in 2007, we’ve been delighted by the diversity, enthusiasm, and loyalty of our generous supporte ... (read more)