Cirrus@Austlit

'The greatest influence on Kate Grenville was her mother, whose own passion for storytelling and record keeping is among the award-winning author’s earliest memories. By Kate Holden.'  (Introduction)

'The film director has never aimed small – and few figures are bigger than Elvis Presley. By Andy Hazel.'

Bangarra’s vast hymn to Country shows the company has a bright future under incoming artistic director Frances Rings. By Chantal Nguyen.

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that journalists start their careers in unexpected places. For Sydney-born Geraldine Brooks it was compiling the horse-racing results for the then Fairfax press. Some decades, five novels and an unexpected lunchtime conversation later, Brooks has made the main character of her new novel a champion American thoroughbred from the mid-19th century.' (Introduction)

'In Scott McCulloch’s debut novel Basin, an aimless nomad called Figure traverses an interminable landscape that feels similar to the impossible staircase in Escher’s lithograph Ascending and Descending. Figure roams the territories bordering the Black Sea, forever moving onwards and forever circling back onto himself. His wayward journey recalls a bad dream: “I feel I’m a ghost who’s wandered into the odyssey of a lunatic,” he reflects.' (Introduction)