AustLit

'Belvoir's 2024 season will be a "gift" for audiences, says artistic director Eamon Flack, who has designed a distinctly accessible program headlined by tried and tested audience favourites — including new productions of Broadway and West End juggernaut The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Tracy Letts's Pulitzer Prize-winning American hit August: Osage County.' (Introduction)

'When Shankari Chandran sent the manuscript for her first novel to Australian publishers, it was unanimously rejected, on the grounds that her story was not sufficiently "Australian" to succeed in the local market. This was despite the fact that its author was Australian and its protagonists are three generations of Australian Tamil women living in Sydney.' (Introduction)   

'Gudanji and Wakaja woman Debra Dank has won a record four out of 14 NSW Premier's Literary Awards for her memoir of family, community and Country, We Come With This Place — including the top gong, Book of the Year.' 

'Growing up, Ivan Sen was fascinated by cops. Living with his Gomeroi mum and siblings in a housing commission area of Tamworth known (affectionately, he says) as "Vegemite Village", his life was entwined with the justice system.'(Introduction)

'The Oscars 2022 nominees won't be announced until February 8, but at time of writing, two films are topping experts' Best Picture predictions — and one of them is The Power of the Dog: a Montana-set western starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a rancher with a cruel streak, streaming now on Netflix.'  (Introduction)

'Victorian author Laura Jean McKay has won the top prize at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards with her debut novel, which imagines a viral pandemic in Australia that gives humans the ability to understand animals.' (Introduction)

'Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch has capped an incredible year of acclaim for her novel The Yield, taking out the $80,000 fiction prize at the Prime Minister's Literary Awards.' (Introduction)

'Melbourne Theatre Company executive director and co-CEO Virginia Lovett describes the impact of the COVID on the company as "a seismic trauma".'

'The year 1996 was one of those 'best of times, worst of times' for Angus Cerini. In perhaps its defining moment, he was beaten up on a train by a group of young men after intervening when they harassed a couple of older women.' (Introduction)

'It's fourth time lucky for Vincent Namatjira, great-grandson of acclaimed artist Albert Namatjira, who has become the first Indigenous Australian to win the $100,000 Archibald Prize in its 99-year history.'