AustLit

'A new novel by the Miles Franklin winner is always an event and her latest arrives at a tumultuous time in history'

'A year ago, Tim Minchin announced his intention "not to become an unbearable tool with a huge-tiny ego". He knows how dangerously intoxicating fame can be, how heady and addictive. "It's not that wankers become famous," he once said. "It's that fame makes you a wanker."'  (Introduction)

'Del Kathryn Barton knows what it is to be a child spinning into a dissociative state, the terror that takes on a life of its own. “Especially for the child’s mind,” she says. “I’m sure there’s lots of classifications now. I used to go into states and I still don’t even really know what they were. I really felt that I was not in control of my mind or my senses or my capacity to function in any normal way. Hearing voices and auditory hallucinations. It was horrific.”'(Introduction)   

'When Leah Purcell was filming the acclaimed movie Jindabyne in 2006, she would go up into the Snowy Mountains on her days off.'  (Introduction)

'Author Robert Drewe’s award-winning novels are much loved for their sharply drawn portraits of Australian life. For his latest, Whipbird, he has turned his satirical eye to the type of monied professional chasing the settler tradition by owning a modest vineyard.' 

'On the plane, taciturn miners spread out in jeans and high-vis vests. Large, grim men flying in to work underground, a dull uniformity in their baseball caps, workboots and doubtful manners. But as the plane banks across red earth and scrub and the tall chimneys of Mount Isa come into view, there is an apparition among these working men. With a stiff white quiff, flaming red lips, jangling chunky jewellery, a long dress of rainbow colours and pale skin swathed in silk scarves, Katie Noonan would be a flamboyant presence anywhere. ' (Introduction)

'A colonial story of hardship and humiliation after a 19th-century shipwreck is unpicked to reveal the Indigenous perspective. '