Artists have to take a dive and either you hit your head on a rock and you split your skull and you die, or that blow to the head is so inspiring that you come back up and do the best work you ever did. But you have to take the dive, and you do not know what the result will be... More

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The Josephine Ulrick Literature and Poetry prizes offer an eye-popping $20,000 to the winner in each category. Now in its tenth year, this is the first time the twenty grand prize pool has been awarded to one unique winner for the best short story and the best poem. More

Living legend Kerry Greenwood is due to release her 60th book this year and is riding high on the successful TV adaptation of the Phryne Fisher series. She informed a thrilled crowd that a second season goes into production in October. More

The uncomfortable truth revealed in Binet’s book is that readers should always have this guard up, and rarely do. Even though we know we are reading an historical novel, and authors ram that message home at festivals and in interviews, it is so easy to conflate historical fact with historical fiction... More

Both Parrett and Birch have written novels that in some way herald a new contemporary Australian realism that is stark yet vivid, honest and bereft of pretension. These are the stories an outsider might imagine modern Australian writers would produce and that will appeal to a younger literate generation who have scant interest in 20th Century historical melodramas mostly written by old white men. More

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Given that sport is our national obsession it is curious to note the lack of depth in our squad when it comes to AFL novels, rendering Carter’s debut a welcome addition to the field. More

My knowledge of mid-list American literary authors has been greatly expanded since I took out a subscription, with some of my favourite short stories of recent years being penned by writers I had not, to my shame, previously heard of. More

Directing readers towards lesser-known titles that perhaps passed under the radar of many reviewers and media outlets is arguably the finest possible use of a literary prize and a technique that the multitude of Australian awards might want to take under consideration. More

The good news for those impoverished bookish types (is there any other kind?) who have been enviously eyeing the Sydney Writers' Festival program whilst cursing their paucity of funds or lack of days in lieu to fly north for the Autumn is that – huzzah! – those good eggs at the Wheeler Centre are marching your heroes over the border for an intense week of double-bill literary legend action. More

Cheever enlisted in the Army in 1942 and would have landed on the beaches of Normandy with the rest of his infantry company a few years later had his first story collection 'The Way Some People Live' not fallen into the hands of a sympathetic Major who pulled him from the front lines to work back in New York. More