Marginalia
Steve Kinnane launches Every Mother's Son is Guilty by Chris Owen
Charlotte Guest Australian history Chris Owen Indigenous studies Steve Kinnane
This is expertly written historical analysis that has delivered a significant contribution to Australian and frontier histories as part of the new canon of historians turning their gaze, and the Nations’ interest, to Australia’s colonial foundations.
Lucy Dougan launches Extinctions by Josephine Wilson
Charlotte Guest Extinctions Josephine Wilson Launch Lucy Dougan The Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript
What is it that we want a novel to do? I think we want it to be about big ideas. I think we want it to ask deeply difficult human questions. I think we want it to speak to now and, I think we want – and maybe without really understanding why or how, at least on an initial read, for the very form to somehow also be telling the story. I really can’t begin to tell all the elegant ways in which Jo achieves this in Extinctions but she does it from page one.
Carmel Bird at the University of Technology Sydney, September 2016
Charlotte Guest Carmel Bird Family Skeleton University of Technology Sydney
I was on a bus driving through bushland when I saw, not wildlife, but an Edwardian funeral hearse slowly emerging, almost sailing, out from a track between the trees, onto the road. I suppose I saw it for about half a minute, and possibly my imagination instantly embellished the vision. It was elegant, regal, gleaming. Eerie. Romantic. Ominous. The windows were etched. There were silver knobs. It was the gift that stimulated my imagination, that put in motion the story that became Family Skeleton. I followed the hearse. Well, figuratively, I followed the hearse.
Launch Speech: The Unknown Judith Wright
Charlotte Guest Georgina Arnott The Unknown Judith Wright
Once an artist is established, it takes a brave researcher to challenge what has become the accepted narrative, or to delve into periods the artist has deliberately avoided discussing. But this is just what Georgina Arnott has done in this bold, fascinating, and impeccably researched study of the early life of Judith Wright, undoubtedly one of the giants of Australian literature and intellectual culture.
An Interview with Rashida Murphy
Charlotte Guest Rashida Murphy The Historian's Daughter
An interview between Samuel Cox, Publishing Intern, and Rashida Murphy, author of The Historian's Daughter._____________________________________________________________________________ 1. Your characters try to forge new lives for themselves in three countries: India, Iran and Australia. What does your novel say about the concept of ‘home’? I think immigrants such as myself, who have spent more time away from than in their ‘home’ country, find the concept troublesome. My characters have connections to, and a longing for, a home they have left or cannot return to, yet make themselves at home wherever they are. I wanted to explore the idea that we are all...