Catriona Menzies-Pike

I was an avid reader of the Sydney Review of Books before I was appointed editor and I happily return to the fold now. My final thanks are to readers for the attention, both to the Sydney Review of Books and to literature, which has made this whole enterprise possible.

In the blurb-saturated present, authors can decry blurbs as corrupt and silly all they like. When they publish new books, however, they will still be obliged to solicit blurbs, and most will provide them for friends and colleagues on request.

Why has it taken me so long to write this review of The Most Important Job in the World? Whenever I…

To call into question the literary value of Dalton’s fiction is not to disqualify the pleasure and imaginative release that hundreds of thousands of readers have found in his novels, especially Boy Swallows Universe; it is to take that popularity seriously.

As the festive lights turn on, we’re looking back over our 2021 program and contemplating the many competing narratives of Australian literature that thread through it.

Dear readers, Last week marked the close of the 2021 Sydney Review of Books publishing program. We could begin a…

The essays will share an ethos of experimentation, of conceptual boldness, of resisting intellectual and creative templates.

A few months into 2020 I thought there was an even chance I’d be writing a swan song SRB editorial…

A call for expressions of interest to write an essay on Parramatta.

WestWords and the Sydney Review of Books invite applications for a two-week residency at the WestWords Centre for Writing. This residency will be…

An Uncertain Grace is a strange, daring and clever novel and Kneen’s openness to connections that many other novelists never dream of making is exhilarating. Her characters wreck themselves with sex and science as they seek ways to live with extinctions, inundations and pollution – and yet Kneen is able to salvage optimism from the wreckage. ‘

On the first page of Julia Leigh’s memoir Avalanche, the author injects herself with artificial hormones: ‘I did this knowing…

Early on in Shirley Hazzard’s most steadfast novel, The Transit of Venus, Professor Sefton Thrale expounds on the end of…

The Sydney Review of Books ends 2016, a year of defeated prognostications globally and locally, on a firmer footing than…

‘Although it looks like you write one book and then another and then another, the reality is much messier than that, and the books are really part of a larger process that’s surprisingly difficult to understand when you’re in the middle of it.’ James Bradley speaks with SRB editor Catriona Menzies-Pike about the shape of a writing career in progress.

A new website, funding success, and a bevy of emerging critics.

A community of free-thinking, intelligent critics, engaged with Australian and international literatures in their many forms, our office shelves groaning with new books for them to consider, more readers than ever – all flourishing in what’s generally agreed to be the most difficult funding environment in 40 years. We’re looking forward to watching the pendulum swing in the opposite direction so that we may continue to give expression to this flourishing in the years to come.

We are inviting applications for the inaugural Copyright Agency-SRB Emerging Critics Fellowships. Applications close on 31 May 2016.

Why do critics line up to write about some books – and shy away from others? The current eddy of interest in a new, young experimental Australian writer, Jack Cox, presents an irresistible opportunity to comment on the reception of difficult literary fiction and the difficulty of separating a debut novel such as Dodge Rose from the buzz that precedes it.

The year has ended on a sour note for the literary sector. The consequences of major cuts to the Australia Council’s funding pool are now becoming apparent – and there are no new funding lifelines in sight. The SRB will resume publication in February 2016. In the meantime, happy summer holidays to all SRB readers!

There’s no books of the year tradition at the SRB. Why not? It might just be too soon to pass a verdict on the best books of 2015. SRB editor Catriona Menzies-Pike on the annual December best books frenzy

‘A mature critical culture isn’t monotheistic and it isn’t the role of a journal such as the SRB to massage consensus. Rather, we’re open to disruptions, to provocation, and to a diversity of critical perspectives. We expect our contributors to be courageous, ethical and independent in their criticism and we will defend them if their conclusions prove unpopular, as is not infrequently the case.’ SRB editor Catriona Menzies-Pike on the results of our first ever reader survey and the year ahead at the SRB.

‘When we talk about the woman writer in 2015, how then do we situate the vital insights of intersectional and trans feminism at the centre of our discussions? This, to me, is the most pressing challenge posed by the Stella Count.’ SRB editor Catriona Menzies-Pike on gender, critical culture and the Stella Count

‘I think Indigenous writers kind of need each other. I feel that more and more, that sense of camaraderie and community. We challenge each other to write better. It is sometimes hard when you’re perhaps the only black writer on a festival or you’re put into a situation where you have to represent a whole community. That’s why we take strength from each other.’ SRB editor Catriona Menzies-Pike speaks with Ellen van Neerven.

The brief and painful Brandis era of arts policy was marked by the sector’s loss of confidence in the government’s consultation processes. If Mitch Fifield can provide more effective channels of communication than open letters, he will have a headstart on his predecessor.

‘I am meant to be a writer– but it is the actor in me who writes. What I mean by that is that I joyfully inhabit the voice of a character as if I’m playing that character.’ Miles Franklin winner Sofie Laguna speaks to the SRB about her fiction and the forces that have shaped her as a writer.

On the weekend Mark Latham broke the unspoken rule of writers festivals: play nice. His deviation from the conventions of ‘respectful conversation’ provoked furious reactions. Has the intemperate jeremiad had its day?

‘Perhaps the faraway can only really be reached through writing, and the faraway is just that which can be imagined, idealised, and never explained’ – Chinese novelist Sheng Keyi on the distances she negotiates through her writing. As the China-Australia Literary Forum approaches, the Sydney Review of Books considers the ways in which literature can bridge cultural and geographical distances.

Australian libraries are full of letters, diaries, drafts and handwritten recipes that can never be published thanks to our archaic copyright laws. While living authors struggle to protect their financial interest in their writing, unpublished works are stuck in the limbo of indefinite copyright – and it’s inhibiting the study of Australian literature and history.

The interdependencies between criticism and a thriving literary culture are complex and multiple. The critical practice that flourishes at the Sydney Review of Books has been made possible in part thanks to generous funding from the Australia Council. The vitality of the magazine, however, ultimately relies not only on the stability of our own funding but also on a well-funded and diverse literary sector that exists as a part of a healthy arts ecology.