Cirrus@Austlit

'It’s a tall order to critique the very thing you are creating as you’re creating it. In the wake of Sally Rooney’s dominance over—for want of a better descriptor—‘women’s literary fiction’, perhaps it’s now de rigueur for the white millennial author to interrogate why we all write what we write. The most famous investigation into the ‘literary sad girl’ still comes from Leslie Jamison, who ruminates on the impact of her own memoir The Recovering, and explores many of these women across history.' (Introduction)

'Relatably self-conscious, uncool Abby is the heroine of Megan Williams’s debut, which won the Text Prize for an unpublished work for young adults or children. Abby is a prickly portrait of how painful our teenage years can be. She is awkward – like, accidentally kissing your cousin’s cousin awkward – sometimes bratty and she always over-analyses every beat of her day.' (Introduction)   

'This year I reach an important milestone: ten years working in the literary industry. In 2013 I entered my first ‘real’ lit job, as an editorial assistant at a small magazine publisher in North Melbourne. I had worked as an intern at two other publishing companies during my master’s, but this was the first time I would actually be paid for what I had studied for five years to do—really, as a voracious reader and writer, for my whole life.' (Introduction)

'In the weak warmth of an early spring sun, comedian and theatre-maker Zoë Coombs Marr sits opposite me outside the Malthouse Theatre. It’s lunchtime on a busy weekday, and the courtyard is packed with creatives and techies from the Malthouse, Chunky Move and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, all of us soaking up what we can of the Melbourne sun before it disappears. '  (Introduction)

'Cultural critic Emily Nussbaum on television’s move from “junk food” to high art. '