Seventy books, published in thirty-one countries, have been named on the Dublin Literary Award 2023 longlist. After Story by Sydney based author and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt, Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down, winner of the 2022 Miles Franklin award, and Cold Enough for Snow by … | Continue reading
Thirty-six books have been recognised by Goodreads in their unofficial best book title award, for, as the name suggests, books with unique and quirky titles. Winners, who are only accorded the honour and glory of being selected, were drawn from books published between August 2022 … | Continue reading
Revive is the name the Australian federal government has given to a new five principle, five year, National Cultural Policy, that was made public yesterday. Revive is a five-year plan to renew and revive Australia’s arts, entertainment and cultural sector. It delivers new momentu … | Continue reading
Conductors are synonymous with classical music performances, yet at the first recital I went to, a show by the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) in 2009, at the Sydney Opera House, no conductor was present. Instead, ACO artistic director, and lead violin player, Richard Tognetti … | Continue reading
Jobs in education, finance, software engineering, journalism, and graphic design, are among some of the occupations under threat from OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT, writes Alex Mitchell for the New York Post. That’s a wide gamut of work. But ChatGPT will also play a part in creating new … | Continue reading
Sydney DJ and electronic musician Flume topped the 2022 Triple J Hottest 100, with his track Say Nothing, a collaboration with Australian singer-songwriter MAY-A. It’s the second time a Flume track has reached number one in the Hottest 100, a feat matched only by defunct Brisbane … | Continue reading
After concerted lobbying by industry representative organisations, such as the Australian Society of Authors, Australian writers will now receive a payment when a library lends out an electronic version of their book. Authors, illustrators, and editors will be compensated for e-b … | Continue reading
Louise Adler, director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, talking to Katrina Strickland, editor of Good Weekend, laments the lack of wider excitement generated by literary awards in Australia: “We adore it when our authors win awards but, actually, often they do not translate into sales, … | Continue reading
The United States Copyright Office (USCO) recently declared it only wants to grant copyright protection to artworks created by people, not AI technologies. Now Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals, says hot AI technology of the moment, Chat … | Continue reading
The countdown of Triple J’s Hottest 100 songs of 2022 kicks off at midday tomorrow, Saturday 28 January 2023. To ramp up anticipation, the powers that be at the Jays have offered a few tantalising clues as to what can be expected this year: Twenty-three acts will be making their … | Continue reading
When people think of The War of the Worlds, the novel written by late British author H. G. Wells, and published by William Heinemann in 1898, after being serialised in 1897, they think of science fiction. Yet the story of the inhabitants of Mars crossing the interplanetary void t … | Continue reading
All Quiet on the Western Front, written in 1928 by Erich Maria Remarque, and Women Talking, written in 2018 by Miriam Toews, are the only two book to film adaptations to be nominated in the best picture category for the 2023 Oscars. This is a far cry from the substantial number o … | Continue reading
Usually a novel’s success hangs in a solid storyline, great characterisation, tension, originality, the list goes on. But as Australian writer and editor Fleur Morrison points out, novels in audiobook format face an additional hurdle when it comes to doing well: their narrator. I … | Continue reading
The countdown of the Hottest 100, a poll of Australian radio station Triple J’s listeners, goes to air from midday (AEST) on Saturday 28 January 2023. Billie Eder and Lachlan Abbott, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, analysed past winners of the countdown, and worked out wha … | Continue reading
Amazon Kindle recently quizzed just over one thousand Australians about their reading habits. Here are some of the findings that caught my eye: Almost half those surveyed read fewer than five books in the past twelve months Meanwhile just over five percent said they’d read fifty … | Continue reading
Websites designed in the late 1990’s, especially personal sites, like the in-your-face Geocities pages, might have been inaccessible, difficult to navigate, devoid of standards, and completely lacking in latter day best practice methodology, but they were fun. Bold. Colourful. No … | Continue reading
Adam Vitcavage, whose podcast Debutiful explores the work of debut authors, offers a blunt observation to aspiring writers, in a recent interview with Los Angeles based novelist Ruth Madievsky: I think aspiring writers need to realize that your dream first book might not be what … | Continue reading
The layoffs in the tech sector continue, with Microsoft and Google among companies announcing mass redundancies across their operations last week. Ten thousand people are impacted at Microsoft, and twelve thousand workers at Google have been sacked. Although both company CEOs str … | Continue reading
Everyone has a book in them, so they say. But the multitude of story ideas is placing a strain on publishing houses. Some book publishers in Australia are said to be so overwhelmed with manuscripts, they are limiting submissions to works of literary fiction only. The outlook for … | Continue reading
Australian bookseller Readings released a list of their top one hundred bestselling titles for 2022, yesterday. Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down, winner of the 2022 Miles Franklin award, Dropbear by Evelyn Araluen, winner of the 2022 Stella Prize, and the aforementioned Cold Enou … | Continue reading
The Novel Prize is a biennial award for works of literary fiction, co-convened by three publishers, Giramondo, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and New Directions, based in Australia, Britain and Ireland, and America, respectively. Earlier this week, eight writers, some published, some not … | Continue reading
Booker Prize organisers are looking for a name for the statuette they present to recipients of the annual literary award, which was originally designed by late Polish-born British author and artist Jan Pieńkowski. The statuette was presented to inaugural Booker Prize winne … | Continue reading
The Australian literary award season (and quite a long season it is), is underway for the year, with the announcement yesterday of the 2023 Indie Book Awards shortlist. Four titles, in six categories, are in contention this year: Fiction: Limberlost by Robbie Arnott Horse by Gera … | Continue reading
A fan of Australian musician Nick Cave, named Mark, asked ChatGPT to write the lyrics to a song “in the style of Nick Cave”, and sent the resulting output to Cave to look at. Despite disliking the lyrics, Cave, who described the song as “bullshit”, and “a grotesque mockery”, wrot … | Continue reading
The finer production details of a film are usually something I don’t pay much attention to. I’m primarily interested in the story, and the way it is told. Having said that, I don’t mind filmmakers talking about, say, visual effects, if it’s being discussed incidentally. Otherwise … | Continue reading
You may not have heard of Indigenous Australian artist and activist Richard Bell, but he has been at the forefront of political activism for over fifty years. Describing himself as an activist masquerading as an artist, Bell has spent fifty years fighting for Aboriginal rights an … | Continue reading
Image courtesy of Ratfink1973. Taylor Swift and Harry Styles are among musicians to recently release material on… cassette. As in cassette tape, or compact cassette. But at least eighty percent of both performers’ target audience must be under the age of thirty-five. How many of … | Continue reading
Nine Australian writers have been named on the 2023 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship shortlist for biography writing. Unlike a literary award, where an author is recognised for a completed work, the fellowship invites writers to pitch an idea for a biography or memoir, they are w … | Continue reading
Publishing novels by serialisation, or regular instalment, used to be a widespread practice. At one time it was the only way to read the latest works of authors such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Jules Verne, Leo Tolstoy, H. G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Usually auth … | Continue reading
Are you ready for some word play? -ussy, which, in this context, is actually considered a suffix — but, in this case, is still a word — has been chosen as the American Dialect Society’s (ADS) word of the year for 2022: “The selection of the suffix -ussy highlights how creativity … | Continue reading
The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, and Vanity Fair, are among books commonly studied in high school. Despite their undoubted literary merit, many of these titles were published decades — and in some cases — centuries, ago. But things a … | Continue reading
Voting is open for Australian book retailer Dymocks annual Top 101 books poll. Eligible titles span seven categories being bestsellers, fiction, fantasy and science-fiction, crime, romance, non-fiction, and young adult, and voters have the unenviable task of selecting just ten bo … | Continue reading
Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1988 novel, The Remains of the Day, twenty-years ago, changed the way British freelance writer Max Liu saw England. When Liu re-read the novel last year, he changed the way he saw the central protagonist James Stevens, the stoic butler of Darlington Hall, … | Continue reading
Despite their cost, the goods sold by some luxury retailers are not always quality buys, though such matters seldom deter customers. It’s the price tag they’re interested in. And the higher the price, the better, writes American author and entrepreneur, Seth Godin: Luxury goods a … | Continue reading
Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla has modestly reduced the prices of cars across its range in Australia. The Tesla Model 3 now starts at $63,900 (was $65,500), whereas the Model Y now starts at $68,900 (was $72,300). Price reductions vary from 1.9 to … | Continue reading
I’ve worked in a number of organisations in the past that have been subject to rounds of staff layoffs or redundancies. In most cases the prime motivation was cost cutting, and the decision to proceed was usually made by a senior executive who would not have to deal directly with … | Continue reading
The 2023 Golden Globes awards were presented today. Best actor winners include Cate Blanchett and Austin Butler, while The Banshees of Inisherin, and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans — which edged out Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar: The Way of Water — took out the best picture awa … | Continue reading
The Netflix produced adaptation of Italian author’s Elena Ferrante’s 2019 coming-of-age novel The Lying Life of Adults, about a teenage girl named Giovanna, living in Naples, is now streaming. Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovan … | Continue reading
Trove, an online library database containing digital copies of significant historical and cultural Australian documents, maintained by the National Library of Australia, may be forced to cease operating at the end of June 2023, unless it is allocated more funding, according to it … | Continue reading
Although regarded as one of the greatest English language books, Wuthering Heights, the haunting 1847 novel of British writer Emily Brontë, was met with a mixed reception when published under Brontë’s non de plume, Ellis Bell. Critics hailed Brontë’s story of star crossed lovers … | Continue reading
Italian manuscript thief Filippo Bernardini, who was alleged to have stolen more than one thousand book drafts, has pleaded guilty, a year after his arrest. Filippo Bernardini impersonated figures from the publishing industry to trick people into handing over their works. He used … | Continue reading
Josh Nicholas, writing for The Guardian, about a recent decline in active members on social network Mastodon: The number of active users on the Mastodon social network has dropped more than 30% since the peak and is continuing a slow decline, according to the latest data posted o … | Continue reading
Tár (trailer), starring Cate Blanchett, The Banshees of Inisherin (trailer), directed by Martin McDonagh, and Aftersun, written and directed by Charlotte Wells, have featured prominently in the 2022 awards of the National Society of Film Critics. Based on their trailers, they all … | Continue reading
Text-to-speech AIs have begun narrating select romance and fiction audiobooks available from Apple Books. Audiobook listeners electing an AI… entity (is that how I should refer to them?) to recite their title can choose between two digital voices, named Madison and Jackson. An ad … | Continue reading
Fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2018 novel, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, would like to see American actor Jessica Chastain cast in the role of Celia St. James, in the upcoming Netflix screen adaptation of the book. I couldn’t agree more with such a choice. Chastain often came … | Continue reading
American journalist, author, and blogger, Clive Thompson, writing about the benefits of blogging. The audience effect is one of the positives, and will go a long way to sharpening your writing: But blogging has another benefit, which is that it triggers the “audience effect”. The … | Continue reading
Monique Judge, writing for The Verge: Buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicat … | Continue reading
I’m not sure how often books with parts of their text blacked-out — rendering paragraphs, possibly entire pages, unreadable — are ever published, but README.txt, a memoir by former American solider, turned whistle blower and activist, Chelsea Manning, published by Penguin Books A … | Continue reading