Cirrus@Austlit

'Tony Birch's latest novel canvasses violence, race and religion.'

'ArtsHub speaks with 'Bluey's Big Play' puppetry director Jacob Williams and performer Jess Golle on translating from screen to stage and the power of make-believe.'

'A multilayered novel about the wife of French artist Paul Cezanne becomes a dual portrait of two women a century apart.'

'Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) is perhaps Australia’s greatest literary export. Born in Kirribilli, she was extraordinarily successful in her lifetime, and was regularly compared to Jane Austen for her talent and wit. Yet, with the exception of those in on the secret, von Arnim’s novels have been almost entirely forgotten. Despite recent editions by the British Library, Oxford University Press, and Persephone Books (which specialises in neglected literature by and about women), it can still be difficult to track down copies of some of her twenty-one works. Accounts of her life, meanwhile, tend to focus on her marriages and affairs, and those of her circles whose fame proved more durable, including her cousin, Katherine Mansfield, and E.M. Forster, whom she employed to tutor her children.' (Introduction)

'One of the frustrating things about being a historian is the number of times you are told by others that surely everything in your specialty must already have been ‘done’. After so many decades or centuries, what more could there possibly be to discover? One of the answers is that what interests scholars, and what topics are considered worthy of examination, changes over time. This explains how ‘new’ material – often sitting in the archives for centuries – comes to light. It also explains why women have not always made the cut, a problem compounded, as recent Twitter discussions have highlighted, by how often research about women by female scholars still goes unpublished.' (Introduction)