Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto talk with Michaela Kalowski

Showing all posts about Australian literature

Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto talk with Michaela Kalowski

13 September 2022

Melbourne based Australian authors Emily Bitto and Miles Allinson discuss their recent novels, Wild Abandon and In Moonland respectively, with Michaela Kalowski, in an interview recorded at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Having penned two of the past year’s most acclaimed novels, Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto come together to discuss their stories of characters searching for identity and meaning within fractured realities. Miles talks about In Moonland, a family portrait of three generations that stretches from the wild idealism of the 70s to the fragile hopes for the future. Emily sheds light on Wild Abandon, her tale of a lonely outsider who travels from Australia to America’s heartland trying to find his place in a late-capitalist world.

Cutters End by Margaret Hickey wins 2022 Danger Prize

10 September 2022

Cutters End by Margaret Hickey book cover

Cutters End, by Victorian based author and playwright Margaret Hickey, was named winner of the 2022 Danger Prize for crime and justice writing with an Australian setting, at the Bad Sydney Crime Festival, yesterday evening.

Published by Penguin Books Australia in July 2022, Cutters End has a synopsis that’s sure to draw in fans of crime writing:

New Year’s Eve, 1989. Eighteen-year-old Ingrid Mathers is hitchhiking her way to Alice Springs. Bored, hungover and separated from her friend Joanne, she accepts a lift to the remote town of Cutters End.

July 2021. Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti is seconded to a recently reopened case, one in which he has a personal connection. Three decades ago, a burnt and broken body was discovered in scrub off the Stuart Highway, 300km south of Cutters End. Though ultimately ruled an accidental death, many people — including a high-profile celebrity — are convinced it was murder.

When Mark’s interviews with the witnesses in the old case files go nowhere, he has no choice but to make the long journey up the highway to Cutters End. And with the help of local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur, he soon learns that this death isn’t the only unsolved case that hangs over the town…

Incidentally, Cutters End was shortlisted in the Ned Kelly awards for crime writing, the winners of which I’ve also written about today.

The 2022 Ned Kelly Australian crime writing award winners

10 September 2022

The winners of the 2022 Ned Kelly awards for crime writing were announced a couple of weeks ago, with a total of one hundred and thirty-five entries vying for the top spot in four award categories.

The Chase by Candice Fox won Best Crime Fiction, Banquet: The Untold Story of Adelaide’s Family Murders by Debi Marshall won Best True Crime, while Banjawarn by Josh Kemp won Best Debut Crime Fiction.

Going offshore, Toronto, Canada, based author Nita Prose took out the award for Best International Crime Fiction published in Australia, with The Maid.

Named for notorious nineteenth century Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly, the awards have celebrated the best Australian crime writing since their inception in 1996.

Alice Pung named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize

9 September 2022

Melbourne based author and lawyer Alice Pung was named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize last month. The prize, which recognises the work of women and non-binary writers, is one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards.

I recently read Pung’s 2021 novel One Hundred Days, which was shortlisted in both the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and the 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards. The story centres on sixteen year Kuruna, and her fraught — to put it mildly — relationship with her overbearing mother, which becomes all the more strained after Kuruna falls pregnant. Not an easy read, if I’m honest.

On the subject of the 2023 Stella Prize, entries are presently being accepted until Wednesday 12 October 2022.

The Age Book of the Year prize 2022 winners announced

9 September 2022

In Moonland by Melbourne based Australian author Miles Allinson, which I’ve written about previously, has won the fiction prize in The Age Book of the Year prize 2022.

Meanwhile Leaping into Waterfalls by Sydney based writer and literary critic Bernadette Brennan — a biography of late Australian short story writer and novelist Gillian Mears — has taken out the award for non-fiction.

The winners of the prize, which was re-booted last year after a nine year hiatus, were announced on the opening night of the Melbourne Writers Festival.

The Dinny O’Hearn Poetry Prize was in the past awarded to works of — you guessed it — poetry, but this doesn’t appear to have been presented since 2012.

Australian publishing industry diversity and inclusion survey 2022

7 September 2022

Recently released results of a diversity and inclusion survey (PDF) conducted by the Australian Publishers Association and the University of Melbourne, offer a revealing snapshot of the Australian publishing industry. Although more than eight in ten publishing professionals are women, few are in senior roles, while under one percent of workers identify as Indigenous or First Nations people:

Fewer than 1% of Australian publishing industry professionals identify as First Nations
84.4% of survey respondents identify as women, 13.8% identify as men, and 2% identify as non-binary or prefer to use another term
The proportion of men increases for senior roles
35.4% of respondents were experiencing mental health conditions at the time of responding to the survey
24.8% of respondents were located in places other than Sydney or Melbourne

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Australian literature, publishing

The winners of the 2022 Davitt Awards for crime writing

3 September 2022

Somehow I missed this earlier in the week, but the winners of the 2022 Davitt Awards for crime writing by Australian women, were announced last week, on Saturday 27 August.

Charlotte McConaghy’s environmental thriller, Once There Were Wolves (Penguin Random House Australia), won the award for Best Adult Novel. The Best Young Adult Novel prize went to Leanne Hall for The Gaps (Text Publishing) while the Best Children’s Novel Award was won by Nicki Greenberg (Melbourne, Victoria) for The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel (Affirm Press).

Untapped a collection of out of print Australian books

15 August 2022

Untapped is working with Ligature Press, the Australian Society of Authors, Melbourne Law School, and libraries across Australia to make out-of-print books available once more. A growing selection of titles — dating back to 1926 so far — can be found in their collection.

Untapped is a collaboration between authors, libraries and researchers, working together to identify Australia’s lost literary treasures and bring them back to life. It creates a new income source for Australian authors, who currently have few options for getting their out-of-print titles available in libraries.

RELATED CONTENT

Australian literature, books, history

2022 Australia Council Awards recipients announcement

9 August 2022

The Australia Council Awards recognise artists, writers, musicians, and other creatives whose work contributes to Australia’s diverse cultural life. Among recipients of the 2022 awards announced yesterday, was Robert Dessaix, a Tasmanian based writer of literary non-fiction, who was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement in Literature award.

Literary non-fiction? I had to look that up. A few of the books I read are classified as literary fiction, but this is the first time I’ve encountered the non-fiction genus.

Literary nonfiction is an elusive creature in literature known by many names. You might hear literary nonfiction called narrative nonfiction or creative nonfiction. Regardless of the name, literary nonfiction tells a story, typically in a creative way. Therefore, creative nonfiction writers use literary devices and writing conventions seen in poetry and fiction, but these accounts are based on actual facts or observations.

Everything Feels Like the End of the World by Else Fitzgerald

8 August 2022

Everything Feels Like the End of the World (published by Allen & Unwin, 2 August 2022), by Mornington Peninsula based Australian writer Else Fitzgerald, seems like a book title for the times some days.

Winner of the 2019 Richell Prize for emerging writers, Fitzgerald written a collection of short stories, exploring a number of chilling dystopian futures for Australia, set both in the near and distant future:

Each story is anchored, at its heart, in what it means to be human: grief, loss, pain and love. A young woman is faced with a difficult choice about her pregnancy in a community ravaged by doubt. An engineer working on a solar shield protecting the Earth shares memories of their lover with an AI companion. Two archivists must decide what is worth saving when the world is flooded by rising sea levels. In a heavily policed state that preferences the human and punishes the different, a mother gives herself up to save her transgenic child.

Nanci Nott, writing for Artshub, describes Everything Feels Like the End of the World as an engaging collection of speculative short fictions:

Each tale is intensely personal, vibrant with specificity, and written with precision. Characters don’t just exist within their settings; entire worlds inhabit these characters. A master of minutiae and memory, Fitzgerald creates an intricate universe of befores-and-afters, sacrifices and consequences, mundane joys and darkest days.

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