Siri Hustvedt is writing for her own survival in Ghost Stories, an extraordinary new grief memoir.
- Associate Professor in Creative Writing, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
We found out the favourite 2025 books of 35 expert readers – and the Books & Ideas team shares our own picks, too.
Literature is full of dysfunctional families. We asked critics to nominate their least favourite mothers.
Literature is full of dysfunctional families. We asked critics to nominate the most troublesome fathers.
New research considers the true value of Meanjin, using publicly available data. The journal has trained generations of Australian writers and editors.
We’ve invited writers, from fields as diverse as wildlife ecology, politics and literature, to nominate their best books of 2024. And this year, the Books & Ideas team share their own picks, too.
We were dismayed to see no Australians on the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century – so, with the help of 50 experts, we created our own, all-Australian list. You can have your say, too!
In Black Duck, Bruce Pascoe traces a calendar year on Yumburra, the farm his bestseller Dark Emu helped to purchase.
Plan your summer reading or catch up on what you missed with The Conversation’s selection of the best books of the year.
Shankari Chandran’s Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which explores Australian racism and the Sri Lankan civil war, is ‘extraordinary’.
The six books on this year’s Miles Franklin shortlist vary in style, themes and the writers’ experience, with veteran novelists and debuts – including an international prize-winner and a 26-year-old.
Our research team tracked the impact of Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe’s bestseller, over five years. We measured its value across a range of criteria, from financial to environmental.
On International Women’s Day, two women writers discuss feminism, writing in the age of Trump and Covid – and being ‘flabbergasted’ by the absence of birth from Western art and philosophy.
Our experts cast their eyes over this list of contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and non-fiction which undertakes impressive trapeze acts across genre boundaries.
The omniscient narrator is alive and well in fiction. Kim Scott’s most recent novel uses a collective narrative voice that encompasses the landscape as well as the human.
Stephanie Bishop’s latest novel demonstrates a sophisticated approach to the relationship between time and narrative: novelists and aspiring writers would do well to look closely at her achievement.
Art as Therapy at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) promises to “challenge visitors to examine assumptions about themselves, society, and how art is viewed in galleries”. And it would be right…
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