Here’s me in the Guardian today.
The Aukus submarine pact has dragged Australia into the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran in all but name. This was all entirely forseeable.
That moment when you exclaim “Helen no!”, reading her diaries… #HelenGarner #MurrayBail
Bloody hell - how good's this?! I missed it some months ago: Chris Fleming on "Huts" (Heidegger's, Wittgenstein's, Adorno's* (* "the last philosopher who would be caught dead in a hut"), Kaczynski... In @overlandjournal.bsky.social overland.org.au/2025/08/huts/
as IWD is coming up I’d like to remind everyone that not all women are great. Some are really really annoying.
Yeah, there's a big gap between a 5-10k longread and an 80k book, but those are the only shapes you're allowed for many pieces of non-fiction. In the days of Pelican paperbacks, 100-200 pages was a very normal length to explore an idea.
"The year 1976 was a thrilling time to be alive, similar to the bliss Wordsworth felt in the Paris dawn of 1791...although Whitlam and the Labor Party had been banished, their reforming zeal had a resounding effect; change, it seemed, even Down Under, was possible." www.smh.com.au/culture/book...
Now that's a @chrissomerville.bsky.social post if I ever saw one!
More songs should start like Monkey Gone to Heaven. "There was a guy." Ok I'm listening, what's this guy up to
Isn't it?! It's by the OZ book designer Josh Durham, riffing on Rothko's Seagram murals, which feature in the text (the rights to those naturally prohibitive!)
Cover of Angela O'Keeffe's Phantom Days UQP
It was the official cover reveal of Angela O'Keeffe's new novel – Phantom Days – from UQP today. I hung on every word of this jewel of a novel, narrated in part by...a book! Out in May in OZ...and from @dundurnpress.bsky.social in '27
70s Tennents lager cans, each with a pic of a different ‘lovely lady’ on.
Back in the 70s Tennent’s lager cans were a teenage boys internet. Personally, I always liked Norma.
*Startling Fact: The last ‘Tennent’s girl’ cans rolled off the production line in 1991.
also this: " I had a great conversation in a school staff room a few months back with someone who had really not liked Audition, and it was one of my favourite conversations about the book. Sure, my ego likes it better if people say they like it, but any and all takes are very welcome."
Go here for a reading guide to @pipadam.bsky.social's Audition! Plus an interview ("I think the most dangerous thing I see is when an author believes they're ‘giving a community a voice’ with complete disregard for the voices that already exist in that community" coffeehousepress.org/pages/readin...
Quietly, calmly and forensically, BBC just dismantled the Trump communications shitshow on Iran.
No hyperbole, just laying out an unprecedented military, diplomatic and reputational shambles.
Worth a watch.
(🎥 BBC News/BBC Verify)
Ok... So this is a proud girlfriend moment - the magnificent @thebooksdesk.bsky.social waving the flag for Australian authors at the London Book Fair!
(Super excited for #westernsydney debut author Linda Atkins!)
(And proud to be Mr Shaw's Unofficial photographer!)
gosh now I fear no one understands the word "barracking" either! Write for an international audience, dear Books Desk!
I shall be spruiking* my wares of course (I only recently discovered this phrase is actually OZ English!) www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/202...
Two books: Randa Abdel-Fattah's DISCIPLINE Amado V Hernandez's LUHA NG BUWAYA/CROCODILE'S TEARS
Book post! A book by the author that makes every pissweak Australian politician's spine eject right out of the top of their heads, and another of the extremely difficult to get Penguin Southeast Asian Classics.
When the Ockhams prove your fella has excellent taste, you trust his appraisal of even "the good icecream" a little more.
Who'd have thought we'd hear that highly apposite phrase of Louise's ("Moscow on the Torrens") once more, but alas... www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Deal news! Hugely excited to advise that UQP has sold North American rights to Angela O'Keeffe's forthcoming Phantom Days, her third novel, to @dundurnpress.bsky.social! And it's a book that we'll be taking to London Book Fair next week, because it is just exquisite... www.uqp.com.au/books/phanto...
yeah I've been gobbling it up I must say!
SO delighted to see @ingridhorrocks.bsky.social and @catherinechidgey.bsky.social shortlisted for New Zealand's premier literary award, the Ockhams! And a non-fiction book I absolutely adored reading last year was @naomiarnold.bsky.social's, so v happy about that too! newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/04/a...
gotta say too I once read a ms by Laura Vincent and suggested it wasn't quite there, but an excellent base from which to go and write another book. And she did!
SO delighted to see @ingridhorrocks.bsky.social and @catherinechidgey.bsky.social shortlisted for New Zealand's premier literary award, the Ockhams! And a non-fiction book I absolutely adored reading last year was @naomiarnold.bsky.social's, so v happy about that too! newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/04/a...
Georges Perec, whose parents both died during WW2 (his dad on the battlefield, his mother exterminated...), meets a German for the first time in his life: his translator Eugen Helmle
Scotland! (Parts of)! I am coming to you! #Glasgow on Weds, #Edinburgh on Thurs, BAD LANGUAGE all the time.
Another great set of books this month: Matthew McDonald's debut poetry collection @ajbwells.bsky.social; Julia Franck's autobiographical novel @return2sanders.bsky.social; and Agri Ismaïl's account of dislocation and late capitalism @brynstole.bsky.social. Plus some EXPLOSIVE new gossip...
