Ed Wright Ed Wright i(A85654 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Keen Insights into Human Character Ed Wright , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 13 February 2021; (p. 17)

— Review of The Mother Fault Kate Mildenhall , 2020 single work novel ; Either Side of Midnight Benjamin Stevenson , 2020 single work novel
1 y separately published work icon Gas Deities Ed Wright , Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2020 21070081 2020 selected work poetry

'Gas Deities is the result of a quest for meaning that negates the big ticket items of ego, intellectual fashion and salvation, leaving behind the generative joys of doubt. Using dramatic monologues and the slipperiness of the lyrical I, Wright takes us on a journey through suburban Australia, with the odd overseas excursion, finding magic in the ordinary, and understanding the creativity of erring at the same time as mining the foibles of pretension.' (Publication summary)

1 Death Drives Two Debuts Ed Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 19 December 2020; (p. 16)

— Review of The Morbids Ewa Ramsey , 2020 single work novel ; Hermit S. R. White , 2020 single work novel
1 Sensitive Sabotage Ed Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 19 September 2020; (p. 17)

— Review of A Lonely Girl Is a Dangerous Thing Jessie Tu , 2020 single work novel ; Smart Ovens for Lonely People Elizabeth Tan , 2020 selected work short story

'Grunge fiction in the 1980s and 90s featured young people living in grimy inner-city suburbs and ­colouring their discombobulation with drugs, booze and awkward or unfortunate sex. This kind of novel is no longer possible.' (Introduction)

1 Walking the Line of Fiction Ed Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 8 August 2020; (p. 16)

— Review of The Application of Pressure Rachael Mead , 2020 single work novel

'The growth of creative non-fiction that offers the reader the frisson of real experience has created interesting questions. Where does fiction end and non-fiction begin?' (Introduction)

1 War as Sport in a Future World Ed Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 11 July 2020; (p. 16)

— Review of Rise and Shine Patrick Allington , 2020 single work novel

'The contemporary literary imagination more and more figures the future as a place where quality of life is worse than it is now. Environmental catastrophe, climate change and now pandemics feature in the scaffolding we use to predict what the world beyond us will be like.' (Introduction)

1 Violence and Bigotry Taint Golden Dream Ed Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 20 June 2020; (p. 16)

— Review of Stone Sky Gold Mountain Mirandi Riwoe , 2020 single work novel
1 Fresh Visions of a Vast Landscape Ed Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 7 March 2020; (p. 25)

— Review of New Australian Fiction 2019 2019 anthology short story ; Listurbia Carly Cappielli , 2019 single work novella ; Red Can Origami Madelaine Dickie , 2019 single work novel
1 Richness of the Short Form Ed Wright , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 22 February 2020; (p. 23)

— Review of Griffith Review no. 66 2019 periodical issue

'The seventh edition of the Griffith Review Novella Project is a literary degustation: seven short novellas leavened with palate-cleansing poetry by established poets such as Stuart Barnes, Stuart Cook and Sarah Holland-Batt, as well as emerging poets including Ella Jeffery and Daniel Swain.' (Introduction)

1 The Heights of Silliness Ed Wright , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 28 December 2019; (p. 18)

— Review of The Dizzying Heights Ross Fitzgerald , Ian McFadyen , 2019 single work novel

The Dizzying Heights, the seventh in Ross Fitzgerald’s Grafton Everest series, begins with Grafton examining his penis in the mirror through the lens of its (and his) senescence. It’s a curiously blunt self-examination, exacerbated by a failure of focus that provides a counterpoint for the far more whimsical satirical confection that follows, a political romp that thoroughly disavows itself of the restrictions of reality.' (Introduction)

1 Love and Fame in Spiky Terrain Ed Wright , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 March 2019; (p. 24)

— Review of Lucida Intervella John Kinsella , 2018 single work novel

'John Kinsella is best known for poetry that is often characterised as anti-­pastoral: the ecological underpinnings, the rootedness in the wheat belt of Western Australia, the postmodern aesthetic awareness. Rather than the celebration of humanised nature, Kinsella’s poems deal with the exploitation of the land and its consequences as well as the often anti-romantic lives of those on the land. It’s a poetry of silos and heat, trail bikes, drought and death.' (Introduction)

1 Wealth and Amorality behind City Crime Ed Wright , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 April 2019; (p. 20)

— Review of Comeback Lindsay Tanner , 2019 single work novel ; Kill Shot Garry Disher , 2018 single work novel ; Something for Nothing Andy Muir , 2017 single work single work novel

'Melburnians have a peculiar fondness for their grunge, an affection (or possibly affectation) that is perhaps unmatched in our other capitals.' (Introduction)

1 True Meaning Lost to Legend Ed Wright , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 11 May 2019; (p. 23)

— Review of Simpson Returns Wayne Macauley , 2019 single work novella

'Once an event escapes from living history its memories become open to confection. When these events are legends, in their loss of connection to actuality they can become vehicles for sentimentality or the mythic embodiment of values society chooses for points of self-identification. The Anzac legend is a classic ­example, of fortitude against the odds, against the stupid decisions of the brass, of mates standing up for mates, of the ­pragmatic know-how of the everyman trumping the pretensions of the nobs.' (Introduction)

1 Where Do the Lonely People Come from? Ed Wright , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 22 June 2019; (p. 24)

— Review of Room for a Stranger Melanie Cheng , 2019 single work novel

'While the towns and villages of Europe emptied into cities for the burgeoning opportunities and exploitations of the industrial revolution, the romantics countered with celebrations of nature and the individual. Literature has been fascinated by the figure of the isolated self, surrounded by millions, ever since.' (Introduction)

1 Cosy Naivety of 80s Suburbia Ed Wright , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10 August 2019; (p. 22)

— Review of This Excellent Machine Stephen Orr , 2019 single work novel

'Stephen Orr is one of the key fictional chroniclers of South Australian life. While earlier novels such as Miles Franklin short-listed The Hands and One Boy Missing are set in the state’s bare country towns, This Excellent Machine is a homage to growing up in Adelaide’s lower middle class suburbs in the 1980s; a story of fibro, Datsuns, flaky men and enduring women set in Lanark Ave, Gleneagles, a fictional analogue of the suburb of Hillcrest.' (Introduction)

1 Paradoxes of Colonialism Ed Wright , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 12 October 2019; (p. 25)

— Review of The Old Lie Claire G. Coleman , 2019 single work novel ; Little Stones Elizabeth Kuiper , 2019 single work novel
1 Review Short : Judith Bishop’s Interval Ed Wright , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 November no. 88 2018;

— Review of Interval Judith Bishop , 2018 selected work poetry
1 Haunting Tale of Human Isolation Ed Wright , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10 February 2018; (p. 18)

— Review of Soon Lois Murphy , 2017 single work novel ; Rural Liberties Neal Drinnan , 2017 single work novel ; The Last Long Drop Mike Safe , 2017 single work novel ; The Fish Girl Mirandi Riwoe , 2017 single work novella

'Western Australia is experiencing a literary purple patch at the moment and Lois Murphy’s debut novel, Soon (Transit Lounge, 288pp, $29.99), is further evidence of this. Murphy, who lives in Melbourne now, spent six years travelling Australia in a homemade four-wheel-drive truck, and this novel about the stubborn last residents of an abandoned town is loosely based on the fate of Wittenoom, infamous as the site of Australia’s largest asbestos mine.' (Introduction)

1 In the Beginning It Was Verse Ed Wright , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 13 January 2018; (p. 15)

— Review of Thea Astley : Selected Poems Thea Astley , 2017 selected work poetry

'Thea Astley was one of Australia’s finest novelists. Her evocation of unusual and eccentric lives in our tropical north was unsurpassed, even if the conspicuous regionalism of her oeuvre may have moderated her posthumous place in the canons of Ozlit.' (Introduction)

1 Picture a Collective Disappearing Act Ed Wright , 2017 single work review essay
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 September 2017; (p. 23)

'Riffing off authors such as Gerald Murnane, Shaun Prescott builds an idiosyncratic vision that is simultaneously banal and powerfully moving. The Town is the debut novel of this short fiction writer from the NSW Blue Mountains. The narrator comes to an unnamed NSW country town to work part-time while writing a book on the disappearing towns of central-western NSW. He finds share accommodation with Rob in a townhouse and a job stacking shelves at the local Woolworths.' (Introduction)

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