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Keywords: Writers Awards

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Booker Prize and why it matters

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 12 November 2024

    As the Booker Prize winner is announced, the perennial questions resurface: What does winning truly mean for writers — and for readers? As public values shift, literary prizes ignite fierce debate about artistic merit, cultural relevance, and the commercial impact of awards. Can a prize still shape the future of fiction?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Nam Le's 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem

    • Peter Craven
    • 05 April 2024
    1 Comment

    Nam Le is one of the strangest writers in the history of Australian literature and is also one of the most incandescently brilliant — which is very weird if you bear in mind that his primary claim to legendary status is a book of short fiction published in 2008. With 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, Le returns with a new work that encapsulates the brilliance and complexity that fans and critics have come to expect.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Charity begins at the microphone

    • Barry Divola
    • 06 March 2024

    A documentary about the making of 1985’s We Are The World holds many surprises, while raising questions about charity singles. These stars were rich and privileged and largely out of touch with how most of the public lived. But at least they were using their fame for something good, and wasn’t that something to be encouraged?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The end of the dream job

    • David Halliday
    • 08 May 2023
    1 Comment

    When chief film critic for The New York Times left his dream job after 23 years, he blamed the lack of original and imaginative work in an industry dominated by conglomerates. While many are lamenting the state of film, the question remains: what does it mean for an art form to diminish?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The beautiful ugliness of Roald Dahl

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 27 February 2023
    13 Comments

    Roald Dahl's beloved children's books have been given a makeover, with 'sensitivity readers' rewording phrases that might offend modern sensibilities. But what has been lost in this sanitisation of Dahl's work? Do we risk losing the very essence of what makes these works so powerful and enduring? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An echo of silence

    • Rory Harris
    • 30 March 2020
    2 Comments

    Melbourne in summer & the weather is grand & blazing, proof that global warming is real. At my age I allow myself to be surprised.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Heart sparks

    • Diane Fahey
    • 09 March 2020
    3 Comments

    I remember, in the small hours, a spill of arcane patterns on the glass — heart-sparks treasuries of hallowed grief, of yet-to-be-lived hope, sequestered in the infinite.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The anatomy of hope

    • Fiona Murphy
    • 18 February 2020
    5 Comments

    Over a decade ago, when applying to study physiotherapy, I carefully read through the application form. It contained a brief but troubling caveat: all students must be physically able to participate in the coursework. I felt nervous, even scared. The answer seemed clear cut to me, but would the university agree?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Honours reflect our shifting values

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 February 2020
    7 Comments

    The great significance of the change may lie in its confirmation that the churches no longer have the central place in Australian society they once enjoyed. This is now being reflected in public ceremonial. The public sphere is now more thoroughly secular and loosed from the moorings of its historical traditions.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Greta Thunberg for person of the year

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 December 2019
    17 Comments

    To nominate Greta Thunberg the most significant person of 2019 is not to canonise her, still less to say that her way of pressing for action to address climate change is the only way. But her intransigence and single-minded focus are needed to mobilise the support necessary to make politicians act responsibly.

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  • MEDIA

    The fake news of the dude and his muse

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 10 October 2019
    3 Comments

    As musician James Blake pointed out regarding Jameela Jamil's contributions to his most recent album, the muse is an objectified woman who is seen to have no direct impact on the creation of the work itself and no creative life of her own, but is merely the source of the male artist's inspiration and a vehicle to project his own desires onto.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Living in Australia's social credit dystopia

    • Kate Galloway
    • 08 October 2019
    6 Comments

    If government is concerned for citizens' wellbeing, it should properly resource services — drug and alcohol support, parenting support, subsidised childcare, education and so on. Instead, it is generating a system of social credit: rewarding those who toe the line and punishing those whose 'score' falls below that of the 'good citizen'.

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