John Kinsella is the author of more than thirty books. His many prizes and awards include the Grace Leven Poetry Prize, the John Bray Award for Poetry from the Adelaide Festival, the Age Poetry Book of the Year Award, the WA Premier’s Book Award for Poetry (three times), a Young Australian Creative Fellowship and senior […]

The full text of Antony Loewenstein′s lecture from the new edition of Overland is now available online. You can read it here. 0 0 0

Overland 193 is now out, officially launched last night with a conversation between Antony Loewenstein and Christos Tsiolkas. The full contents will come online over the next weeks. In the interim, you can access Alexis Wright’s important essay on Oodgeroo and the state of Indigenous Australia today, and economist Frank Stilwell’s critique of market-based solutions […]

Clive Hamilton’s speech from the Walkley Short List announcement has been reprinted at New Matilda. Here’s a snippet: Non-fiction is going through a renaissance in Australia, particularly books of social and political commentary and analysis. The resurgence of non-fiction is Australian society reflecting on itself and has served as an antidote to the complacency that […]

From the website of the State Library of Victoria: 14 November 2008 – 28 February 2009 A good book is essential equipment for summer, whether you’re at the beach, in the bush or in your own backyard. That’s why we’ve put together a selection of great reads for the 2008 Summer Read program. The list […]

Hear Mamdouh Habib talk about his new book, My Story: the Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, with co-author Julia Collingwood and Australian Red Cross Professor of International Humanitarian Law Tim McCormack − 6 pm Tuesday 18 November at Melbourne University Law School, 185 Pelham St Carlton. RSVP: (03) 9349 5955 or marketing@scribepub.com.au.

Over at the Australian, there’s a report that the new president of the Screen Producers Association of Australia, Antony Ginnane, has said Australian films are ‘in the main, dark depressing bleak pieces that are the cultural equivalent of ethnic cleansing’. Ginnane continues: ‘Nobody goes to see them. If they premiered most of the Australian movies […]

Former Overland poetry editor Pam Brown launches her new book True Thoughts. True Thoughts follows the success of Pam Brown’s last major collection Dear Deliriaawarded the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry in 2004. True Thoughts includes poems of sharply delineated streetscapes, imagined havens, distant places, encounters with friends, ideas, history, and a kind of fragmented […]

Raewyn Connell on nineteen sixty-eight and all that. What was the moment? Nineteen sixty-eight – in everyone’s memory the political peak of the sixties – was the year the Institutional Revolutionary Party government shot down a student demonstration in Tlatelolco Square, in the lead-up to the Mexico City Olympic Games, leaving between 100 and 300 […]

From the Walkley press release: The Walkley Award for Best Non-Fiction Book celebrates excellence in non-fiction literature and long-form journalism. This year there were 72 entries ranging from true crime and war reporting to biographies and investigative journalism.  The Walkley Awards are Australia’s most prestigious awards for journalism, ranging across print, online, TV, radio and […]

Overland presents Antony Loewenstein  with Christos Tsiolkas on Wednesday 19 November 2008, 6.30 pm for the launch of Overland 193 and a conversation about oil, war and the responsibility of public intellectuals.   More details here. Antony also has a piece in today’s Age on the Rudd government’s attitude to the internet: BEFORE this year’s Beijing Olympic Games, Prime […]

Entry to the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets, sponsored by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, is now closed. Thank you to all the poets who have sent in work. Winners will be announced in Overland 194, March 2009 and posted on this site.

Waleed Aly will talk about the US election result on Tuesday 18 November 2008, from 6 to 7 pm, at the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law (Monash University Law Chambers, 472 Bourke Street, Melbourne). Light refreshments from 7 pm (rsvp to castan.centre@law.monash.edu.au or tel 9905 3327).

Press release from the ASA: Parallel importation: Authors are angry — Press ReleaseAuthors are angry The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) is extremely disappointed that the terms of reference for the Productivity Commission inquiry into parallel importation provisions for books lack any cultural component. The ASA has previously made submissions to the Productivity Commission for […]

Northern Notes Writers Festival, sponsored by NMIT November 7 – 16 2008 REVEL IN WRITING: workshops, book launches, readings, author talks, panel discussions, competitions and a weekend book market. Event Guide Friday 7 November:  Northcote Town Hall 7.30pm                        OPENING NIGHT 8.00pm                        VOICEPRINTS 08 PART 1 Saturday 8 November: Northcote Town Hall 1.00-8.00pm   […]

A determination For Justice Frank Vincent AO QC and the Victoria University Council It must now be near that time of culmination: a subdued group walks along the dolorous path, a prison-aisle. They are going away, the chaplain says, and praises their civility as they quietly pass. From behind every single cell door like a […]