Posts by Jerath Head
Nature Writing Prize 2017
The Nature Conservancy’s fourth biennial Nature Writing Prize is open for submissions until 27 January 2017. The $5,000 award is for an essay between 3,000 and 5,000 words to the theme ‘writing of place’. The prize will go to an Australian writer whose entry is judged to be of the highest literary merit and which…
Read MoreGriffith Review in the 2016 Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List
Every year, the Grattan Institute releases a summer reading list for the Prime Minister. It recommends books and articles that the Prime Minister, or any Australian interested in public debate, will find both stimulating and a great read. We’re thrilled to see that this year’s list includes ‘Time for a new consensus: Fostering Australia’s comparative…
Read MoreMelissa Lucashenko awarded $80,000 fellowship
Congratulations to Griffith Review contributor Melissa Lucashenko, who this week was awarded the Copyright Agency Author Fellowship. This year, CAL doubled the value of its fellowship for mid-to-late career authors to $80,000. The money will help Melissa finish a contemporary novel about ‘outlaws and Aboriginal hillbillies’, set in a poor NSW country town called Durrongo.
Read MoreGriffith Review Fellowships announced
Griffith Review is proud to join with the Queensland Literary Awards in announcing a series of Queensland writers Fellowships. This initiative will also be supported by the Queensland Government through State Library of Queensland and Arts Queensland, and philanthropic funds. Up to six fellowships will be awarded each year over two years, 2016 and 2017.…
Read More2016 Josephine Ulrick Prize winners
Congratulations to the winners of the 2016 Josephine Ulrick Poetry and Literature Prizes! Griffith University Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize Joint first prize ($7,500 each): ‘Bloodwork’ – Chloe Wilson (Williamstown, Victoria) ‘T/error: A Troika’ – Sarah Holland-Batt (Hamilton, Queensland) Griffith University Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize First prize ($10,000): ‘Chess and Dragonflies’ – Dr Tessa Lunney…
Read MoreJosephine Ulrick Prizes 2016 Shortlist
The shortlists for the 2016 Griffith University Josephine Ulrick Prizes have been announced! Stay tuned for the winners in mid-August. Poetry Prize: ‘Boy’, Jordie Albiston (Victoria) ‘The Demolition of Hotel Australia’, John Hawke (Victoria) ‘T/error: A Troika’, Sarah Holland-Batt (Queensland) ‘Preserved Heart with Gunshot Wound’, Sarah Holland-Batt (Queensland) ‘Whitely visits Morandi’, Nathan Shepherdson (Queensland) ‘Bloodwork’,…
Read MoreCultural institutions and ideas of Australia in the age of FANG: the 2016 Brian Johns lecture
In the age of FANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) how can small players like Australia sustain their cultural identity? Griffith Review editor Julianne Schultz explains why the age of FANG is profoundly different to anything we’ve known before. She discusses the cultural industries, their importance and potential and says that if we’re to become…
Read MoreBrian Johns AO A critical Australian romantic
Eulogy by Julianne Schultz AM FAHA, St Canice’s Kings Cross, 7 January 2016 Brian Johns was a remarkable man – original, brave, generous, funny, smart, determined and, above all, endlessly curious. When his beloved Sarah asked me to deliver this eulogy, I said I was not sure I could. I worried I would be too…
Read MoreIndigenous recognition in WA
Yesterday, Western Australia became the last mainland state to recognise Indigenous people as the state’s first inhabitants and traditional custodians, with a unanimously passed bill in the WA Legislative Council. Listen to Fran Kelly’s report on this important, if symoblic, milestone on ABC RN Breakfast. For more on the state of Indigenous affairs in Western…
Read MoreOn ‘Hotel Sorrento’, by Hannie Rayson
HANNIE RAYSON’S WELL-loved Hotel Sorrento, which premiered onstage in 1991 and was made into a feature film in 1995, explored some immediately identifiable terrain for many audiences when it first appeared. It tapped the theme of Australian ‘cultural cringe’, the contested ownership of cultural and personal stories and conflict over entitlement and betrayal. These concerns…
Read MoreThe one that got away
THAT AFTERNOON, IN the sea-green undersea world of the House of Representatives, the bells shrilling, politicians hurrying into the chamber, the media watching scornfully from the press gallery, Whitlam looked like a whale among minnows: huge, imperturbable, impassive. I wrote in my notebook: ‘Gough sits at the centre table, spectacles perched unexpectedly on nose, poring…
Read MoreOn ‘The Harp in the South’, by Ruth Park
IN OCTOBER 1945, just three months after Japan’s surrender ended Australia’s role in the Second World War, the Sydney Morning Herald announced that it had set aside £30,000 to stimulate the development of our art and literature, which included a £2,000 prize for best novel. Ruth Park recounts in the second volume of her autobiography,…
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