ABR
Competitions
ABR
Poetry Prize 2008 - first
prize now worth $4000
In its short
life, this competition has become one of the most prestigious
poetry competition in the country. Now it is even more lucrative,
with combined prizes of $5000 and a first prize of $4000.
Entries are now invited for the fiftth ABR Poetry Prize.
The previous winners were Stephen Edgar, Alex Skovron and
Judith Bishop and Ross Clark.
The winner will be announced in the April 2009 issue of ABR.
Entries close 10 December 2008.
Click
here for guidelines and application form.
John
Button Readers' Award - winner receives $1000
To
commemorate the life and work of John Button, an esteemed
ABR contributor and board member who died in April 2008,
we have created a new annual prize.
The John Button Readers' Award will be presented to the
author of the most popular article published in ABR during
the previous year, as selected by ABR readers.
The winner of the John Button Readers' Award will receive
$1000. But if you annotate your vote and state your reasons
for choosing the contributor, you'll be in the
running to win a copy of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary,
Sixth Edition (valued at $399), courtesy of our friends
at Oxford University Press.
Voting closes now close 31 December 2008.
Click
here for guidelines and application form.
Recent
competitions
The
2008 ABR Reviewing Competition
We've
become aware that many university student wished to enter but
were finding it difficult to do so before the semester break in
July. Thus we have extended the deadline to July 31.
Reviews should be 800 words and of any book originally published
since January 2006. All categories of books are eligible, including
fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children's and YA books.
Please click
here for full details in the entry form.
This
competition is closed.
The
Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay - deadline extended -
entries now close 30 September!
Australian
Book Review (ABR) and Copyright Agency Limited
(CAL) are delighted to seek entries for the third Calibre
Prize for an Outstanding Essay. With a first prize of $10,000,
this is one of the world's major essay competitions.
The Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay is designed as
an inclusive competition. We welcome essays from leading writers
and commentators, but also from previously unpublished writers.
All non-fiction subjects are eligible: from life writing and
literary studies, to history and politics and environmental
studies, to anthropology and popular science. Essayists must
reside in Australia or be Australian citizens living overseas.
ABR and CAL look forward to fostering and rewarding
new insights into our literature, our culture and our society.
Click
here for guidelines and application form. Click
here for detailed Media Release announcing the Prize.
This competition is closed.
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Current
reviews
'History
versus the novelist'
James Bradley on Kate Grenville's
new novel
James Bradley reviews Kate
Grenville's new novel, The Lieutenant. While praising
the flawless construction,
economy and grace of The Lieutenant,
Bradley critiques the novel's relationship with historical
and biographical sources. It remains mired, Bradley argues,
in 'the same mess of historical pastiche that entraps Eleanor
Dark's The Timeless Land (1941), neither history
(with all the restrictions that implies) nor truly fiction
in its own right, but some unsatisfying amalgam of the two.'
'The
great nothingness'
Peter Pierce on The Penguin
Book of the Road
'Roads are not places,' writers Peter Pierce, 'but ways
to and from them.' This anthology includes contributions
from
eminent Australian writers, including David Malouf, Robert
Hughes, Dorothy Hewett and Clive James. Commending Delia
Falconer's astute editorship, Pierce notes that in spite
of the metaphor of divergence and flight, the characters
from these stories are seeking ways to return home.
'Barefoot
on sharp stones'
Chris Wallace-Crabbe on Robert Dessaix
'Who is, or rather who was, Andre Gide?'
asks Chris Wallace-Crabbe in his review of Robert Dessaix's
Arabesques,
a 'tale of double lives'. Cross-stiching autobiography with
reactions to exotic places and past writers, Dessaix takes
his audience sightseeing through Algiers, Northern Italy
and
France - much to Wallace-Crabbe's delight: 'Dessaix is never
less than a writer of cunningly shaped, seductive narratives.'
'Missing from My Own Life'
Elisabeth Holdsworth - winner of 2007
Calibre Prize
Last year Elisabeth Holdsworth won the inaugural
Calibre
Prize for her essay 'An die Nachgeborenen: For Those
Who Come After'. Few ABR articles have generated
such interest
and emotion. Now she has written a further instalment of
her remarkable life story, and explains the reasons for
depicting aspects of it in fiction.
Sharman, shaman, showman
Gay Bilson on Blood &Tinsel
The
ever-popular Gay Bilson reviews Jim Sharman's memoirs.
Sharman has kept interesting company in his illustrious
career as a theatre and opera director: Rudolf Nureyev's
notorious sexual haunts are mentioned; there is an exchanged
look with Andy Warhol. At the heart of the book, however,
is Sharman's professional and personal relationship with
Patrick White.
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AUSTRALIAN
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