'In the January-February issue, we feature our annual Arts Highlights, as nominated by twenty-one critics and arts professionals. We also reveal the 2025 Peter Porter Poetry Prize shortlisted poems. Matthew Lamb reviews a book on Elon Musk, Eve Vincent assesses Rick Morton’s deep dive into Robodebt, and Mark Finnane has a fascinating article on the new phenomenon of Citational Justice in academic research. Julie Janson reviews a book of provocative Indigenous visions, Nick Hordern weighs Geoff Raby’s account of the Russia/China struggle, and Jonathan Ricketson reviews the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novels. There’s Toby Davidson on Francis Webb, Georgina Arnott on Judith Wright, and reviews of works by Robert Fisk, Joe Aston, John Farnham, Inga Simpson, Kim Carr, Al Pacino, and more.' (Publication summary)
'Criticisms first. Kim Carr’s insightful yet evasive memoir, A Long March, reads more like a short march. As a key left factional leader in the Australian Labor Party for the best part of forty years, the former Victorian senator squibs on details. He doesn’t explain the subterranean workings of the ALP; doesn’t fess up on the genesis of his feuds with the likes of Julia Gillard, Kim Beazley, Greg Combet, Anthony Albanese, and John Cain; doesn’t come clean on the part he played in the fall of the Gillard government in 2013; and doesn’t take his share of responsibility for the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments’ failure to implement his laudable industry policies. This book should be more revealing, much longer, and much more reflective.' (Introduction)
(Introduction)
'A year before her death in 2000, Judith Wright’s autobiography Half a Lifetime was published. The phrase ‘female as I was…’ peppered her stories. Miles Franklin’s Sybylla Melvyn had been a childhood idol. Wright conceded that Sybylla’s use of a stockwhip to assert power might have seemed ‘a little over the odds’. Then: ‘but if you had to?’' (Introduction)
'Emily Tsokos Purtill’s first novel, Matia, is both ambitiously expansive and, narrated as a series of moments in time, deftly miniaturised. Spanning four individual decades from 1940 to 2070, and moving between continents, it details the lives of four generations of Greek-Australian mothers and daughters. Unlike a conventional family saga, the novel has the associative structure of memory, moving through time and space in unpredictable ways, creating both threads of continuity and a sense of fragmentation. The narrative focus on women charts the struggle for agency through the eyes of the four women, each of them bequeathed a bracelet – the Greek word matia of the book’s title – intended to ward off the evil eye. As such, the modern concept of individualism collides with the realms of prophecy and superstition, producing a fascinating exploration of the crucial issues of female agency and choice.'(Introduction)
'On the cover of Little Bit, a hot-pink neon sign points the way to the dive bars and deprivation within, priming the reader for a certain type of story. Think Natassja Kinski as Jane in her pink peepshow sweater in Paris, Texas. It’s going to be a book about good women, bad men, cheap sex, crime, alcohol, and trouble.' (Introduction)
'Jakob Ziguras – widely published in Australian literary magazines and the recipient of prestigious poetry prizes – was born in Poland and came to Australia as a child with his parents in 1984. He studied fine arts before completing a doctorate in philosophy, which he teaches (he is also a translator). Much of this background is in evidence in his poetry. In recent years he has lived in his birthplace, Wrocław, Poland, translating contemporary Polish poets while working on his third book of poems, Venetian Mirrors.' (Introduction)
