AustLit

'‘I keep coming back to John Marsden. What makes him so fascinating to me is that he approaches writing for young adults with a whole philosophy of what it means to be a teenager – a philosophy that’s embedded in the two schools he runs, but also in his early experiences with mental illness and hospitalisation. His perspective raises interesting questions about YA fiction – how much darkness is allowed, before you are considered a “bad influence”?’

'An original and moving look by award-winning writer Alice Pung at one of her biggest influences – the much-loved and hugely successful writer John Marsden.

'In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.' (Publication summary)

'Kate says she doesn’t know what to say about writing. When people ask, she tells them to prepare for a life of failure.

'Award-winning writer Erik Jensen plunges the reader into the world of acclaimed novelist, poet and pioneering feminist Kate Jennings. Weaving in his interviews with Jennings in New York, he shows how poetry, politics and family were transmuted into her first novel, Snake – a work of art that depicts rural Australia in a funny, cutting and unforgettable way. This is a biography of a book and the life that made it.' (Publication summary)

'In this passionate and electrifying short book, Christos Tsiolkas writes about his year spent reading Patrick White, of his ‘discovery and rediscovery of White as a writer.’ The result is a vivid introduction to and celebration of the Nobel prize-winning writer’s work that asks: what does it mean to us now?

'In the Writers on Writers series, leading writers reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative, crisp and written from a practitioner’s perspective, the series starts a fresh conversation between past and present, and writer and reader. It sheds light on the craft of writing, and introduces some intriguing and talented authors and their work.' (Publication summary)

'For Ceridwen Dovey, J.M. Coetzee ‘has always been there, an unseen but strongly felt presence in our small family drama’. As a child, she observed with fascination her mother’s immersion in Coetzee’s writing as she worked on what would become the first critical study of his early novels.

'Even now, as a writer herself, Ceridwen’s relationship with Coetzee’s books is still mediated by her mother’s readings of them: to get to him, she must first step through her mother’s formidable mind. With tenderness and insight, Dovey draws on this personal history to explore the Nobel Prize-winner’s work – how his books ‘do theory’ on themselves – while also tracing the intellectual heritage that has been passed from mother to daughter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Hazzard was the first Australian writer I read who looked outwards, away from Australia. Her work spoke of places from which I had come and places to which I longed to go … It was reading as an affair of revelations and gifts. It fell like rain, greening my vision of Australian literature as a stony country where I would never feel at home. Splendour had entered the scene.

In this vibrant, rich and personal essay on acclaimed author Shirley Hazzard, Michelle de Kretser offers a masterclass in writing that is powerful and exhilarating, that is ‘perfect’ because it is ‘exact’. She celebrates the precision and musicality of Hazzard’s prose and illuminates the humour, humanity and revelatory impact of her work. This jewel of a book is both a wonderful introduction to Hazzard and a treat for her long-time fans.

In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Robyn Davidson, author of the classic memoir Tracks, has led a remarkable life of writing and nomadic travel. In this crisp, erudite essay, acclaimed critic and journalist Richard Cooke explores Davidson’s relationship with place and freedom, and her singular presence in Australian letters.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'‘Across Farmer’s works, there has always been an attraction to those beings who occupy two realms … Once one has lived elsewhere, lived differently, it doesn’t matter whether she stays to forge a new life or turns back towards the old, or moves on once again; there will always be the shadow, the after-image, of the life not lived.’ 

'Beverley Farmer’s writing reflects on restlessness, desire and homecoming. In this brilliantly acute essay, fellow novelist and short-story writer Josephine Rowe finds a kindred spirit and argues for a celebration and reclamation of this unique Australian author.

'In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and well-written, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.'

Source: publisher's blurb

'Stan Grant is drawn to Thomas Keneally ‘for many reasons: we share an Irish heritage and a complicated relationship with religion. I am especially interested in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, which was a formative novel for me. My family shares a connection with the real Jimmy Governor as well. [The book] raises questions about non-Indigenous writers tackling Indigenous issues and characters.’

'In this eloquent, clear-eyed essay, acclaimed journalist Stan Grant sheds light on one of Australia’s most controversial yet enduringly relevant novels.

'In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.' (Publication summary)

 (Publication summary)

'A gift of an essay that illuminates the literary talents of two of Australia’s greatest writers

'In this beautifully written personal essay, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Geraldine Brooks offers readers brilliant insights into the work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers, Tim Winton.

'In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.' (Publication summary)

'An illuminating essay on the bestselling Noongar writer and author of the Miles Franklin Award–winning novels Benang and That Deadman Dance

''I value Kim Scott's fiction so highly because I feel that his approach is to put the flags aside. That Deadman Dance asks us not to consider who we were so much as who we could be, collectively, in the future.'

'Noongar writer Kim Scott has won the Miles Franklin Award twice for his novels. In this moving essay, Tony Birch shows how Scott uses fiction as a pathway to truth. We meet a writer who 'inhabits a range of guises, faces he wears to interrogate the complex and messy frontier history of colonial encounters'. The result is 'new stories' for the nation. This, says Birch, is the work that Kim Scott has been doing for many years.' (Publication summary)

'An insightful exploration of one of Australia's most acclaimed writers, the award-winning Alexis Wright

'A brilliant study of renowned Indigenous author Alexis Wright, winner of the 2007 and 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the 2018 and 2024 Stella Prize

'Alexis Wright is the most eminent and influential Indigenous creative writer of recent times. In this eloquent essay, noted critic Geordie Williamson reflects with deep insight on Wright's powerful work.' (Publication summary)