AustLit

'What made Mungo MacCallum special, one of the things, was that for all the bewilderment and dismay he felt looking at politics he never lost his sense of clarity. If John Howard was the most effective politician of the past two decades, Mungo’s preferred description of him was the most enduring: “an unflushable turd”.' (Introduction)

/Since his first short film won the Palme d’Or in 2003, Glendyn Ivin has established himself as one of Australia’s most exciting film and television directors. The forthcoming Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts, brings some light to his dark meditations. By Stephen A. Russell.' (Introduction)

'What does collective action look like at the end of the world? Who will prepare the meals for those hungry for sustenance and liberation? In Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt, her second full-length collection, Elena Gomez demands her readers consider what the body needs as it resists its own oppression. A glorious retort to late-stage capitalism and all the ways it distracts us, this collection spins together a bleak map of what it means to exist today, while forcing us to consider all the parts of ourselves we have already offered to a system that yearns for our surrender.' (Publication summary)

'F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that he once thought there were no second acts in American lives. But what of third or fourth acts? Or the lives of Greek Americans migrating to Australia? Such are the conundrums driving Andrew Pippos’s debut novel, a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves and the lives they shape.' (Publication summary)