AustLit

'Among the various portentous ‘deaths’ that seem to be befalling contemporary culture – the death of the ‘manly man’, the death of ‘Australian values’, the death of the personal essay – is the lesser-known apparent death of the editor. In a 2008 long-read for Essays in Criticism, Harvard University’s J Stephen Murphy lamented the slow demise of my long-beloved profession, largely as a result of the changes to the publishing landscape wrought by new media and their ostensible democratisation of writing and literature.' (Introduction)

'Tom O’Lincoln’s moving political memoir, The Highway Is for Gamblers, is a testament to a life worth living in the ranks of those fighting for human liberation. Tom became politicised in the turbulent 1960s and spent decades writing, organising and travelling in a lifelong effort to renew a creative tradition of Marxism in Australia and abroad (one of his many accomplishments was to establish the first Marxist website in the Indonesian language).' (Introduction)

'When we hear the word ‘critics’, the implication is that we are talking about literature; their lowbrow cousins warrant clarifiers, such as ‘film critics’ or ‘music critics’. In Australia, film critics are effectively quarantined from most major writing grants and arts funding for nonfiction or criticism – they are politely fobbed off to screen industry bodies who (at best) politely bounce them back. Alongside a number of other factors, professional film critics in this country risk becoming considered little more than dedicated hobbyists, something addressed recently by Cameron Williams.' (Introduction)