Elon Musk’s arrival at Twitter last October sparked a stampede for the doors, as members worried about where Musk might take the platform. But surprisingly, departures have been matched by arrivals, says Sarah Perez, writing for Techcrunch: Worldwide mobile app installs are up by … | Continue reading
After spending fourteen years writing a novel — between working and bringing up a family — American lawyer turned writer Lloyd Devereux Richards, published his novel Stone Maidens through Amazon, in 2012. And then next to nothing happened. Until Richard’s daughter, Marguerite, po … | Continue reading
Life’s too short to stick with, say, a movie or a book, that isn’t appealing, so ditch them, says Josh Gondelman, writing for Self magazine: This is not, by the way, a criticism of the slow burn. It’s simply a permission slip to ditch the no burn. Gratification doesn’t have to be … | Continue reading
Here’s a selection of recent or upcoming Australian published books to add to your TBR list, that have caught my eye this week. The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams — follow up to 2020’s The Dictionary of Lost Words — a story about twin sisters working in the bindery at Oxfo … | Continue reading
There are ways to begin a writing career, and there are ways to begin a writing career. Your first novel being the subject of a manuscript bidding contest, and then making the shortlist of a major literary award once published, would probably rate as a pretty good start in the ey … | Continue reading
The Booker Prize has been on the lookout for a name for the statuette that is presented to winners of the British literary award. After combing through suggestions, a shortlist of six potential names has been published, and everyone is invited to vote for their favourite: Beryl – … | Continue reading
Image courtesy of Evgeni Tcherkasski. “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the oldest scientists in human history.” Learning this may come as a surprise to readers of Astronomy, Sky Country, written by Karlie Alinta Noon and Krystal De Napoli, and published by Thames … | Continue reading
Neuroscientist and author Friederike Fabritius, writing for CNBC: One Harvard study found that introverts’ brains work differently, and have thicker gray matter compared to extroverts. In people who are strongly extroverted, gray matter was consistently thinner. Introverts also s … | Continue reading
New York based American publisher HarperCollins has reached a tentative deal with workers who have been striking since November 2022. The tentative agreement includes increases to minimum salaries across levels throughout the term of the agreement, as well as a one time $1,500 lu … | Continue reading
The winner of the 2022 Novel Prize is due to be announced any day now. The award is a collaboration between Australian publishing house Giramondo, and international counterparts Fitzcarraldo Editions in Britain, and New Directions in the United States. Celebrating works of litera … | Continue reading
The program for Adelaide Writers’ Week 2023, which runs from Saturday 4 March though to Thursday 9 March 2023, in the capital of South Australia, has been published. This year’s theme is Truth Be Told, always a subjective, nuanced matter, as festival director Louise Adler notes: … | Continue reading
New York based pop-culture publication Vulture has established their own film award — a “mini-academy” — to recognise the work of stunt professionals: Since the AMPAS won’t properly fete achievements in stunts, we’re going to do it. We’ve spent the past few months assembling our … | Continue reading
Australian author Hazel Edwards, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald: I’m not Indigenous. I’m not Muslim. I’m not a refugee. I’m not transgender. I’m not disabled. And I’m not a hippopotamus who eats cake. But as a professional author of more than 200 books across 50 years, I’v … | Continue reading
The Australian/Vogel’s Award for Young Writers has launched the career of many an Australian author, including Emma Batchelor, Katherine Brabon, and Murray Middleton. Entries are open for the 2023 award, to Australian citizens or permanent residents, who are under the age of thir … | Continue reading
American based Indian author Salman Rushdie says he is struggling to write again, following a violent attack in August 2022, in a New Yorker article by David Remnick: At this meeting and in subsequent conversations, I sensed conflicting instincts in Rushdie when he replied to que … | Continue reading
Entries are open for the 2023 Val Vallis Award for an unpublished poem, until Sunday 26 February 2023. Named in honour of late Queensland poet, lecturer, and opera critic Valentine Vallis, who died in 2009, the award recognises unpublished works, by Australian poets, of no more t … | Continue reading
Microsoft today announced the launch of a turbo-charged version of its Bing search engine. In short, it promises to everything ChatGPT can do, and more. And on paper, at least, it sounds impressive: We’ve updated the Edge browser with new AI capabilities and a new look, and we’ve … | Continue reading
Tasmania based Australian author Robbie Arnott, has been longlisted in the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize, for his 2022 novel, Limberlost. Established in 2006, the Dylan Thomas Prize recognises the best published English language literary work, written by an author aged 39 or under, glo … | Continue reading
An analysis of songs in Triple J’s Hottest 100 countdown for 2022, which was aired on 28 January 2023, reveals them to among the worst to dance to in almost a decade, say Mark Doman, Katia Shatoba, and Thomas Brettell, writing for ABC News. The same research shows 1995 to be the … | Continue reading
Queensland based Australian author Lystra Rose won the Indigenous Writing Award for her debut novel The Upwelling, at the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, which were presented last week in Melbourne. Take a few minutes to listen to her acceptance speech: I was the first … | Continue reading
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey is remixed with George Lucas’ 1977 space opera Star Wars, by YouTuber Poakwoods, and this is the result. Truly awesome. Also, it seems hard to believe from the third decade of the twenty-first century that less than ten … | Continue reading
Photo by Sven Damerow. Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Check out the stunning entries in the 2022 Wiki Loves Earth photographic competition. This image, by Sven Damerow, of a cuckoo wasp, was created by blending several photos together. A larger version of the photo can … | Continue reading
By 2025 Australia will have a poet laureate, who will presumably be selected and appointed by the proposed Writers Australia peak body. As with many aspects of the National Culture Policy which was unveiled last Monday though, details remain thin on the ground for now. For instan … | Continue reading
Krystal Hu, writing for Reuters: “In 20 years following the internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app,” UBS analysts wrote in the note. It took TikTok about nine months after its global launch to reach 100 million users and Instagram 2-1/2 years, a … | Continue reading
For years now book aficionados, publishers, and literary agents, have been convening on #BookTwitter, a community similar to Instagram’s #Bookstagram posse of book lovers. Like many other Twitter groups though, #BookTwitter’s future hangs in the balance, subject to the fickle whi … | Continue reading
Writers Australia is a new peak body to be established as part of the National Cultural Policy, which was released by the Australian federal government last Monday. While the exact functions of Writers Australia — which comes into being in 2025 — are yet to be fully detailed, its … | Continue reading
Now if Australia had a poet laureate, which it will by 2025, perhaps their work would be winging its way through interplanetary space towards Jupiter. Instead, verse composed by American poet laureate Ada Limón, will be engraved on Europa Clipper, a NASA space probe scheduled for … | Continue reading
Information is Beautiful looks at the different of assessing a film’s success. By worldwide box office gross takings, Avatar, made in 2010, by James Cameron, tops the list. But adjust the takings for inflation, and the picture changes. Sort of. Avatar still tops the stack, but Ti … | Continue reading
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, creators of the original Instagram, who sold the photo-sharing to Facebook for one billion dollars in 2018, have launched a new app called Artifact. Rather than curating photos though, Artifact serves up popular news articles and blog posts: The si … | Continue reading
The Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2023 winners were announced at an awards ceremony held at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre this evening. Twenty-seven titles were included on the shortlist last December, across seven categories. Winners in each category, together with the People’ … | Continue reading
Among initiatives announced this week in the Australian federal government’s National Cultural Policy, is the formation of Writers Australia, a body that will, according to the policy document, “provide direct support to the literature sector from 2025.” Writers Australia will be … | Continue reading
Australian author, and co-founder of the Stella Prize, Sophie Cunningham, discusses her latest novel, This Devastating Fever (published by Ultimo Press, September 2022), with Melbourne based author Emily Bitto, in a podcast recorded by the Wheeler Centre. This Devastating Fever, … | Continue reading
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