culture

Felicity Plunkett Each of the 12 stories in Fiona McFarlane’s fourth book, Highway 13, relates to a serial killer’s crimes. Set in different times and places, McFarlane’s stories work loosely with the facts of seven murders in the Belanglo State Forest south of...

So Mayer On the eve of her Australian tour, transformative feminist and writer Roxane Gay ponders change, truths and freedom in an age of rising authoritarianism.

Stephen Romei “ Ding! Round One.” This repeated opening sentence leads to hard-hitting moments in Daniel Tamone’s debut novel, The Fists of the Father , which centres on three generations of an Australian boxing family. For the youngest, 25-year-old Ted “Little...

Kurt Johnson Music’s ephemerality is central to its mysterious appeal. How can an art form capable of such complex structure, such emotional pull, vanish the instant the final note fades? It’s a kind of magic. In The Shortest History of Music by Andrew Ford we...

Maria Takolander Science fiction is often concerned with reproduction, which is typically figured as an incursion of the alien upon the human – exemplified by the horrific inseminations and chest-cracking faux-births in that classic of science-fiction cinema, Alien...

Linda Jaivin The latest book by acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chigozie Obioma, The Road to the Country, addresses brutal conflict and ideological tribalism front on.

Miriam Cosic Ceridwen Dovey is a wonderful nonfiction writer, often – but not always – on scientific themes and increasingly on space. She has written repeatedly for The New Yorker , including a 2018 piece titled “Elon Musk and the Failure of Our Imagination in...

Justine Hyde Award-winning Australian playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer’s debut novel, The End and Everything Before It , is inflected with whimsy and curiosity, characteristics the author has honed through his pedigree in writing children’s theatre. Kruckemeyer’s...

James Bradley Water – its primal creativity, fluidity and changeability – is vital to cultures all over the world. This is especially true in Aotearoa New Zealand, where water is an integral part of Māori identity and being, a living force that flows through...