Cirrus@Austlit

'This collection of letters between the two grandes dames of Australian letters, Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower, shows how the writing life is often a struggle between freedom and the hard choices writers make to sustain that freedom. Despite growing up in the same Sydney suburb, Hazzard and Harrower never did meet in Sydney. Although there were meetings later, in Europe, this was a friendship that was grounded in  care, and particularly in the care of the difficult and elderly in Hazzard’s mother, Kit, and Harrower’s friend, the novelist Patrick White.' (Introduction)   

'The loose boundaries of art and love are explored in this portrait of Heide Museum founder, Sunday Reed.'

'Mesothelioma in a mining town in WA is sensitively handled in this two-hander.'

'A repurposing of Dickens' classic tale with a gingerbread golem and a miser called Scroogavitz.'

'Frank Moorhouse was an Australian writer who defined a generation’s engagement with lost idealism and style. He is best remembered for his Edith trilogy, about a diplomat’s role in creating the League of Nations. A little over a year after his death in June 2022, he is now the subject of a biography by Catharine Lumby, a media studies scholar he had a close friendship with during his lifetime (another by Matthew Lamb is forthcoming). The dilemma posed in Lumby’s biography, Frank Moorhouse: A Life, then, is how to negotiate the limits of other people’s privacy, particularly when negotiating the life of a writer who saw privacy as a veil that accomplished censorship by other means.' (Introduction)

'A collection of personal essays exploring the many tangents of love.'

'A memoir about being imprisoned in Iran for 804 days.'

'A comic's hard-won journey is paved with doubt, misogyny and mental health issues.'

'The author's own writings are combined with essays from experts on migration, refugee rights, politics and literature.'

'A multilayered, multi-voice tale of dispossession and dislocation.'

'A lesser known tale of James Joyce's daughter comes to the fore.'

'A performance tasked with the forensic asking of questions to unpick a messy world.'

'A story of creativity, family and resilience that revolves about Jewish identity and diaspora.'

'Flipping to reveal the underside of the gig economy.'

'A queer thriller set in Moscow where nothing is what it seems.'

'A wide survey of the contribution of theatre to our national sense of identity.'

'A resonant moment in contemporary times to restage Brecht's famous anti-war play.'

'This adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s farcical short story has uneven notes.'

'Euripides' classic tale as seen through Medea's children is flamboyant but muddied.'