A planned Uber-style service, currently named Chariot for Women, is recruiting thousands of female drivers across the United States. The drivers will only accept women and child passengers. The aim of…
- Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
Throughout history, book reviewers have sometimes been comically off the mark in their assessments. A New York Times reviewer described Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita as “dull, dull, dull in a pretentious…
What is often overlooked in discussions about the sexual appeal of breasts is that they have not always been regarded as irresistibly attractive in all points in history and across all cultures.
Why did Peter Dutton choose ‘witch’ when describing Samantha Maiden? The word has a long history of misogyny – particularly towards outspoken or powerful women.
Most modern Christmas films angle for comedy with a touch of schmaltz, but literary Christmases frequently tap into the anxiety and sadness that can accompany the “happiest time of year”.
It’s 150 years since an Oxford mathematics don published the most important work of children’s literature and one of the most influential books of all time. The origins of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland…
When most people think of book censorship, they imagine political regimes and potentially book burning in Nazi Germany. What is little considered is that most books that have been challenged or banned are books for young people.
Last month author Catherine Nichols went public with her account of sending her novel manuscript to literary agents under a male pseudonym. A writing sample sent to 50 agents in her own name resulted in…
Atticus Finch, we learn in Go Set a Watchman, once attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, and welcomes pro-segregation speakers at local council meetings. But is he really so different to the man we know from To Kill a Mockingbird?
Many child narrators in adult fiction are precocious. This enables them to describe events and people in ways that would not be possible for ordinary children of their age.
The desire to connect with literary places supports a substantial tourist trade. And the reasons why people embark on literary pilgrimages are as diverse as the kinds of fiction that inspire them.
The American branch of PEN, a literary and human rights organisation, has prompted 35 writers to protest its decision to give recognition to the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. At its upcoming gala, PEN…
Emily Bitto has won the 2015 Stella Prize for her debut novel, The Strays. The prize is now in its third year and was established to redress the way in which women writers were typically overlooked for major literary prizes
Social media entrepreneur Belle Gibson is not the first to be accused of fabricating a personal recovery story for public consumption. So what responsibility do publishers have in such cases?
The six finalists of the Stella Prize, announced yesterday, include three authors who have been shortlisted based on their first major works of fiction. That’s definitely something to celebrate.
By now there can be few people who don’t know Harper Lee’s supposedly long-lost manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, will be published in July. It will be the first book published by Lee since To Kill a Mockingbird…
Colleen McCullough, writer of the highest-selling Australian book, died yesterday aged 77. The novel that consumes her legacy, The Thorn Birds (1977), is one that Germaine Greer described as the “best…
We’re starting 2015 with an experiment in collaborative creative writing. What happens when you ask ten academics to write a story together? Taking our cue from the Exquisite Cadaver game played by Surrealist…
Who owns a story? When an author writes a book, are the words on the page the definitive version of the plot and characters? Does what the author have to say outside the world of the book have the power…
“I didn’t encourage my daughter to play with Barbie dolls and dress up in flouncy fairy costumes, but she just gravitated toward them.” When confronted with the idea that gendered marketing and stereotypes…
Most people had little call to know of University of Sydney poetry professor Barry Spurr until a series of his emails were published by New Matilda. The messages contained racist slurs, misogynistic attitudes…
Is there still a Commonwealth culture? And, if so, will the “cultural flavour” of the Man Booker Prize, as two-times Booker winner Peter Carey recently described it, be lost now that Americans are eligible…
It is now more than a week since actress Emma Watson delivered what has repeatedly been described as a “game-changing” speech about sexism at the United Nations New York headquarters. The response to the…
This week’s episode of ABC’s typically male-dominated show Q&A involved a panel of women who were speakers at Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI). While the show presented far more conservative…
I’m fixated on scanning Aldi’s general merchandise offerings in its weekly catalogue. From big-screen TVs to tortilla warmers, Aldi will place almost any consumer good haphazardly in the middle of its…
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