'Five years ago Paul Ireland directed and Damian Hill wrote and starred in Pawno, a gripping film set in the Melbourne inner-city suburb of Prahran. Hill died suddenly in 2018 while working on the pair’s second collaboration, Measure for Measure, and the film is dedicated to him. As the title suggests, the screenplay is inspired by William Shakespeare.' (Introduction)
'Those who like their history wrapped in light, jocular prose will warm to Garry Linnell’s Moonlite. It’s the story of George Scott, sometime preacher, sometime conman, sailor, adventurer and eventually notorious bushranger.' (Introduction)
'Chris Hammer has excelled himself with Trust, the third novel in his Martin Scarsden series. The first two, Scrublands and Silver, were big reads with such complex plots that they left readers with surer memories of their Australian locations and unusual characters than their storylines.' (Introduction)
'Covid has been with us long enough now that some things may be said with certainty. In the realm of culture, for example, books have risen to the moment. No longer do they gather dust on bedside tables or prop up laptops for Netflix.' (Introduction)
'Clipped or long, end-stopped or enjambed, oscillating in a ragged pattern or uniform in length: in all its guises, the poetic line is the single most important tool at a poet’s disposal. At a surface level, the line is most often what announces poetry as poetry — but its effects are more subtle and far-reaching than this.' (Introduction)