In 2008, Melbourne joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network when it was designated the first and only City of Literature in Australia, and the second in the world. Melbourne’s designation as a UNESCO City of Literature is acknowledgment of the breadth, depth and vibrancy of the city’s literary culture. Melbourne supports a diverse range of writers,…

    From the steam engine to the smartphone, technology has always changed our lives. But do you ever feel like you have no say? Meet the real Luddites.     Credits Design, illustration, writing: Sam Wallman Concept and producer: Natasha Mitchell Digital production: Rosanna Ryan Development: Colin Gourlay

    I’ve spent heaps of time at Melbourne Uni over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it buzz quite like this. Elsie and I step off the tram in front of the main entrance, Rajesh bouncing behind us. Elsie and Raj stand aside, presumably for me to catch my breath, but…

  Among the jumble of papers in my desk drawer are some disturbing notes I made in the Wellcome Library a few years ago. I was in London researching how medical scientists took possession of the dead for dissection during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was proving to be a dark tale: I…

  Cardboard incarceration This cardboard prison they call an archive is cold, airless and silent as death. Floor-to-ceiling boxes contain voices no longer heard yet wailing within faces no longer seen yet still missing in a jail of captured snippets, images and memories among the severed heads and bleached bones of dismembered bodies tucked tidily…

to be engulfed A moment of hypnosis Ariane loves Christian. Christian loves Ariane’s sister, Isabel. This film is about how relationships that come to an end will be a mess. It’s about many other things, too. Primarily this. My Sister’s Good Fortune opens with Ariane & Christian standing together under a tree, speaking. Ariane is…

  The most common question I get asked in Australia is: “Where are you from?” It is asked at a party, by an Uber driver, and in a bottle shop, when I mistakenly call a six-pack a case. It is asked whenever my accent is mistaken as a sign of otherness. It is asked everywhere,…

  It’s always summer in childhood. I remember when we went to see the Peanuts movie Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown for your birthday. Your dad dropped us off outside the cinema and we accidentally went into the wrong cinema and saw The Deep instead. It was 1977. We were nine years old. Lost…

  She was waiting for him at the station as he got off the train the following afternoon, standing on the other side of the gate with her schoolbag slung over her shoulder. Roland showed the stationmaster his pass as the man reached up to unhook the stopping-all-stations sign, his pale face smudged with redness…

    Dr Tony Birch chats on podcast The Garret. Show notes Tony recognises Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnand Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird as profound influences on his writing, as well as Barry Hines’ A Kestral for a Knave. Tony grew up in Richmond and Collingwood, which were at the time rough working class inner city suburbs of Melbourne. He spent…

  He felt it first when the horses shifted and cried. They had been muttering among themselves all day, but this was different, a note of panic in it. The horses aren’t yours to care about, George, he reminded himself. He went from cabin to cabin and collected the crockery and cutlery smeared and encrusted…

    Of all the sports functions I’ve attended over the years (and there have been many), one sticks out in my memory for all the wrong reasons. Towards the end of the evening, I went to the ladies’ room. When I came out of my cubicle and headed for the washbasin, I saw a…

  ‘Kuller Kullup’  by Bruce Pascoe   Kuller Kullup walked from the stoney shoulder of Targangil to this bend of Birrarung spoke to all the people gathered there, Wathaurong, Bunurong, Maap Wurunjeri, Ganai, Taungurong, all the people, and he said, the sky is falling in, bring me poles, the longest poles, bring me axes of…

  The architect enters the room Wearing a black velvet blazer Crisp white shirt, skinny leg jeans A caricature – oozing ‘starchitect’ cool He’s won the tender To design an Aboriginal health centre He’s saving our lives One commission at a time He promises community engagement Indigenous design through collaborative consultation Hand in hand We’ll…

  Can we cheat death with words? Of course we can’t – but we’ll probably die trying, as David Astle attested at the Wheeler Centre Gala 2017.  It’s dark. The fridge is humming. You’re lying on a hotel bed, half-awake, half-asleep – neither here nor there, to be honest – the maritime blink of a smoke alarm…

Thirteen young editors from Melbourne’s west investigated many a crime and murder mysteries lurking in their neighbourhoods to put together the sixth issue of early harvest:   ‘Investigation of Pencil Red’ by Orlando Cavallaro (age 13). Published in early harvest issue six:   ‘Terror at 1000 Storey’ is a collaborative, interactive story about you, your…

  The People’s Justice by Soreti Kadir   My people have always known justice through song My people have always known justice through song When feet started pounding the ground to resist the coming rampage the Songstress stood by closely if you choose to see what most see which is mostly misperception “Why are you…

  By the time we move to Footscray, Owen is a secret seed, secret even from me. All the time he is there, as I lug cardboard boxes, and scrub paint from sinks, and paint the rental we are leaving a dingy shade of beige — the same shade that, on moving in, we had painted…

  The winner of Slamalamadingdong for April, wāni, performs ‘Silence’ at Slamalamadingdong on April 27, 2017.  

  Woman Hard work is etched in my bones.  I see it in my mother’s restless hands, the way she jiggles her knees or bites her fingernails when she sits down to rest. I saw it in the spotlessness of both my grandmothers’ houses – in the way that they never sat down until everything…

  They are eating the photographs Because there is no bread The photographs proliferate   Your excavated back looks suspended we are looking down on you   And you are caught on the crumbs of buildings we are standing on that which stood on you   The space between the crumbled parts of which you…

  My father wrote in depth about the southern Victorian landscape. It features in each of his four novels, both of his short story collections and in his essays and non-fiction work. The shifting coastline of Western Port Bay’s marshy north and the drained swamps of West Gippsland captivated him. Dad was fascinated by maps,…

  In this week’s podcast we investigate rumours of the death of the personal essay. Then we watch Hounds of Love, Ben Young’s cinematic portrait of a serial-killer marriage. And finally we explore the consolations and cultural complexities of identifying with a spirit animal.   Links to pieces discussed: ‘The Personal-Essay Boom is Over’ by Jia Tolentino…

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  Neve Ayres pretended she didn’t know the baby strapped to her chest. He was still crying, his thin, newly alive cry. She tried to focus on the metronomic wash of the sea and the pungent blankets of seagrass underfoot. The colours – rust, charcoal and mossy green. But the baby’s cries, caught on a…

    Gate Two, Melbourne Cricket Ground. At the bottom of an elm tree-lined walk from Jolimont station is the entrance to the MCC members’ reserve. Unlike the cold concrete jungle that characterises the rest of the stadium, its wood-grained interior emanates a warm yellowish glow. A large MCC monogram is emblazoned proudly on the…

    0. prologue Cécile was happy to go home, saying Australia was too heavy for her liking. There was something there, like the naked ugliness of Australia stirred a colonial guilt that she didn’t have to face daily in Belgium, what with their gay-marriage-since-2003 situation and their great geographical distance from Congo. in which…