Peter Clynes wrote his first poem when he was eight years old; his grandmother told him she loved it so he took that as a sign of good things to come. He started writing again more seriously later in high school.

Romy Ash is a Melbourne-based writer, who, prior to the release of this debut novel was best known for her award-winning short fiction, which has appeared regularly in Australian literary journals. Those familiar with her work have been struck by the deceptive nature of her story writing. While sensing the potential menace lurking in the shadows of the central narrative, when the full emotion and occasional shock contained in one of her stories is revealed, it comes as a surprise.

Anna Funder is an internationally acclaimed bestselling Australian author whose debut Stasiland recounted the personal stories of people who worked for the East German secret police, and those whose lives were affected and even destroyed by their covert activities. The book won a swag of international prizes. The manuscript of her follow-up first novel, All […]

Life on the Edge: The Autobiography of Ralph de Boissière Lexicon Trinidad Limited Ralph de Boissière lived for a hundred years and wrote five novels but this autobiography may be the story that de Boissière was always meant to tell. Born in Trinidad in 1907 he migrated to Melbourne in 1948 and lived the rest […]

The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction Edited by Ken Gelder and Rachel Weaver MUP I read this book while embodying the bush cliche – lurching between cattle stations and floodplains, rainforest and thick scrub, dipping into the stories by the light of campfires and fading torch batteries. Given these unexpectedly apt settings I suppose […]

In Overland 200, Marion Rankine examines originality or lack thereof when writers write Australia, ‘Sometimes it takes a writer’: Flicking through an old issue of Overland (edition 182) I came across an essay by Malcolm Knox entitled ‘Pushing Against the Real World: The Case for “Original” Australian Fiction’. It sparked my interest – I was […]

She may have grown up in Tasmania, but I’m claiming Carmel Bird as a Melbourne writer because she lives here now. If you haven’t heard of her, why not? The woman has a prolific publishing history, beginning with her first collection of stories in 1983. I published my first two books myself. If you decide […]

I’m writing a PhD on Indigenous Australia and have been travelling the Top End researching for six months or so. The Melbourne Writers Festival began the very day after I arrived home. Given the topic of my PhD, attending the Writing Indigenous Australia seminar seemed like an appropriate thing to do. The panel was made […]

MWF session: A year for Australian writing This session had it all, from heckling to backslapping, from scholarly commentary to dogged insistence. It was what you could call a well-rounded experience. Funnily, looking back, the topic, based on the publication of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The Cambridge History of Australian Literature, […]

Laurie Clancy’s death this July is a great loss to Australia’s literary community, and a particular cause of sorrow to Overland. Although Laurie was b inclination attached to Overland, a chance combination of circumstances led to his inclusion in the Meanjin team for one of the annual cricket matches that enacted the rivalry between the […]

I can’t let the death last week of Australian writer Jessica Anderson go unremarked. Why? Because although she twice won the Miles Franklin Award (1978 and 1980) and her novel Tirra Lirra by the River has been on high school reading lists, Anderson was for most of her long life marginalised, a misfit, a sensitive […]