The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Hugh Mackay posits the idea that a novelist may come closer to the 'ideal of truth telling' than a social researcher. Because fiction 'springs directly from my own imagination, fed by my own experience' says Mackay, 'I'm free to tell it exactly as it occurs to me. My social analysis is an educated attempt to capture others' reality; the novels draw on my own personal reality.'
A column canvassing current literary news including some brief comments about the launch of Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and the results of the 2008 Prime Minister's Prize for History.