Culture

Mark O’Flynn Ducks Wind arising. Dark clouds brewing. En route one summer from San Francisco to Sydney the merchant ship SS El Faro Tancred 214J, caught in the billowing skirts of Cyclone Larry, spilled some of its cargo into the waters …

Sarah Krasnostein The unpredictable and compelling new series from Apple TV+, Sunny, morphs through sci-fi, thriller, noir mystery, family drama and comedy.

Shaad D’Souza Fontaines D.C.’s viscerally exciting new album, Romance, can be morose, but it rarely descends into doomsaying or cynicism.

Neha Kale Equal parts precise and powerful, the abstractions of Lesley Dumbrell are a study in the subjective nature of perception – and the cumulative rewards of looking closely at the world.

Kate Holden Acclaimed Irish choreographer and dancer Luke Murphy – whose dance theatre series Volcano has its Australian premiere at the Brisbane Festival – puts the sweating body at the centre of urgent questions.

Geordie Williamson Rebecca West used to call women “idiots” and men “lunatics”, a binary she defended as perfectly sound. The Greek root of “idiot” means private person, the writer explained – one who does not take part in public life – and women in Achaean …

Kurt Johnson Since pretty much the beginning, quantum mechanics has been marooned in a quiet crisis. Its vague pronouncements find no purchase in our macro-level intuition. Instead, it sparks wild corollaries such as the multiverse or pronouncements like “the moon …

Monique Grbec The study of language by First Nations people has the power to save lives. Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New, a collaboration between Indigenous linguists Gari Tudor-Smith, Paul Williams and linguistics professor Felicity Meakins, breathes …

Bronwyn Birdsall “The thing is,” she says, in a voice that doesn’t waver, “I think you want something very different to me.” It’s hard not to eavesdrop in this tiny cafe, but the last words make me lean forward. Different. Different how? The man …

Rhoda Kwan After the death of a grandmother she didn’t know, the narrator of Brothers and Ghosts ponders the question: how much does it take to understand where you come from? This is the quiet, beating heart of the loosely autobiographical debut novel …

Carmel Bird The first sentence in this powerful collection of short stories ends with the words “uneasy, restless” – a signature of what is to come. John Kinsella is a poet at the top of his game. His fiction reveals a further flowering of his imagination, …

Monique Grbec Gratitude ripples through Jilya. The highly anticipated memoir from Nyamal psychologist Dr Tracy Westerman is a fascinating insight into a remarkable life. An international trailblazer in the fields of cultural competency, suicide prevention …