Bookings open for the launch of Angela O'Keeffe's third novel, Phantom Days – at Gleebooks on May 7! trybooking.com/events/landi...

Rhoda Roberts AO, the arts executive who had an enduring impact on the cultural life of this country, has died. The Widjabul Wieybal woman was the creative force behind Australia's best-loved festivals and helped bring Welcomes to Country to the modern era.

Vladimir writes to Vera

Cover reveal today for Adam Ouston's new novel "Mine" from Transit Lounge! "A wild, ecstatic howl of a book, dense with ideas and emotion and written with a ferocious energy as mesmerising as it is exhilarating" says James Bradley, and...indeed!! transitlounge.com.au/shop/mine/

Take a bow, Ben Quilty! "Populism is what's destroying this planet..." www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

The Silvey saga gets worse… www.theage.com.au/national/wes...

As if the day couldn’t get any worse, I bought a Radler instead of a beer… #NotAShandyDay

Oh-so-true anecdote from Garner’s Diaries…

In a crowded field & under consistent intense pressure from the NT & WA, Qld consistently strives to live up to its ghastly history & display the most petty, stupid, ugly, knee-jerk, system-loaded, officially racist place in modern Australia. Love & respect to everyone there fighting it.

I haven't panned a book in 7 years but I think novelists who've earned a $3 million advance are fair game. www.thefrontlist.org/p/yann-marte...

Chicago may have ripped Goethe, but Bonn has protein shake Beethoven

Berlin pals, does anybody know of any cool, friendly profs at FU/HU working on Critical Theory/Adorno/English & American Lit who might be up for sponsoring me to be a visiting fellow next year?

Underexplored social phenomenon: the German penchant for giving your WiFi a ‘witty’ name. Never seen it anywhere else.

So excited to see Lucy Nelson longlisted for the @thestellaprize.bsky.social for her debut story collection Wait Here! From the judges' report: "The glistening stories in this debut collection ask questions of mothering and its absence... These stories are virtuosic..." stella.org.au/book/lucy-ne...

Wayne Marshall's debut novel reviewed in Books & Publishing today ($): "Exhilaratingly inventive, Henry Goes Bush stretches the boundaries of historical fiction in ways that feel entirely its own." Out in May from Picador! www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/202...

First they cancel our words, then they cancel our awards. theconversation.com/the-queensla...

London Book Fair - for the last time at Olympia, which is rather sad! (and the OZ presence alas depleted, owing to flight cancellations through the Middle East)

I asked Carody Culver, editor of the high brow literary journal Griffith Review to talk 💩 with me at the launch of my low brow children’s picture book. Come for the puns if you’re in Brisbane in April. wherethewildthingsare.com.au/pages/14080-...

I don’t get Yorkshire pudding… #SundayRoast #TheMotherCountry

2023 omg will he be leader? Will the guy who was a CEO and stuff be leader? What do you mean we should ask more questions, he was a CEO and stuff. 2026 omg when’s he getting rolled? Today? Tomorrow? Whoever thought he’d be a good PM cos he was a CEO and stuff must of had rocks in their head eh?

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

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

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.

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!)

I shall be spruiking* my wares of course (I only recently discovered this phrase is actually OZ English!) www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/202...

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...

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...

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...

Dear Blueskiers, I give you the beautiful Nailbourne, a sporadic stream in Kent that 9 months of the year is little more than a dry ditch. But after a rainy winter it bursts into clear energetic life, racing through its grassy course and finally into the sea. It's one of my favourite sights.

This great little anecdote is right out of a Grace Paley short story.

When your Art teachers get together on a school trip

Poetry is when you write the words "warp and weft" If you write "warp and weft" you have committed poetry

The Israel lobby and its stenographers in the media dislike context so last night at the Adelaide Town Hall I set the record straight on the #AWW26 debacle.Given the continuing misrepresentation and fact free reporting an edited version of the speech is now up on the Pearls & Irritations website.

Delighted to see Womb in the running here: I just adore their records! www.rnz.co.nz/life/music/2...