Australian Book Review
One of Australia’s leading literary magazines. We publish reviews, essays, commentary, and creative writing, and offer several prizes and fellowships. Home to the Jolley, Porter, and Calibre prizes.
www.australianbookreview.com.au
- Australian Book Review is delighted to announce the twelve poets selected for the 2026 Peter Porter Poetry Prize longlist. The shortlist will be announced on 30 December 2025. Keep an eye on our website for more details! #peterporterpoetryprize #AustralianBookReview #poetrylovers #poetryprize
- Read the new issue, out now.
- The 2026 Calibre Essay Prize is now open.
- Read 'Land rights interrupted? How Whitlam’s dismissal changed the history of First Nations land repossession' by Heidi Norman and Francis Markham on the ABR website.
- Read the new October issue, out now.
- This week on The ABR Podcast we feature Tara Sharman’s short story ‘Shelling’, which won the 2025 Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. www.australianbookreview.com.au/podcast/760-...
- This week on the ABR Podcast, Lynda Ng reviews To Save and To Destroy: Writing as an Other by @vietthanhnguyen.bsky.social. ‘Other Orientalisms: Refusing to be spectacle’ by @lyndang.bsky.social | @harvardpress.bsky.social www.australianbookreview.com.au/podcast/760-...
- ‘Evans’s Romeo & Juliet reminds us of the time and love required to craft live art, and of the art of living in real time.’ ‘Romeo & Juliet: A production that winks at Petrarchan courtly love conventions’ by Kate Flaherty www.australianbookreview.com.au/arts-update/...
- Read the September issue of Australian Book Review, available now. www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- ‘Miles Franklin Undercover does not have the weight of Roe’s biography, nor the lyricism of Salonika Burning. It is, instead, a slice of Franklin’s life ..’ Lucy Sussex reviews ‘Miles Franklin Undercover’ by Kerrie Davies | @allenandunwin.bsky.social www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- ‘Our New Gods is gripping and without tenderness ... It is a glimpse into the human heart, which finds something cold and unpleasant lurking inside.’ Jonathan Ricketson reviews ‘Our New Gods’ by Thomas Vowles www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- ‘The Southern Frontier brings a fascinating new perspective to a topic that is likely to become increasingly important as geopolitical and environmental threats to Antarctica mount.’ Elizabeth Leane reviews ‘The Southern Frontier’ by Rohan Howitt www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- ‘For Levy’s devotees, The Position of Spoons will be another encounter with her stylistic eccentricities and humorous mode of looking at the world.’ Beth Kearney reviews ‘The Position of Spoons’ by Deborah Levy | penguinbooksusa.bsky.social www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- ABR is delighted to announce the appointment of Ben Brooker as its inaugural Arts Editor.
- ABR is delighted to announce the appointment of Felicity Plunkett as its new Poetry Editor.
- ‘The Name of the Sister seems laden with meaning and import but I struggled to work out what these were and how they might fit together.’ Maggie Nolan reviews ‘The Name of the Sister’ by Gail Jones | @textpublishing.bsky.social www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- ‘After a couple of rocky years featuring several less than stellar productions, the seemingly assured success of Carmen and Rusalka suggests that Opera Australia is on the right path.’ ‘Rusalka: Opera Australia on the right path with Dvořák’s watery opera’ by Michael Halliwell
- ‘Hamersley Iron’s workforce went from total collective bargaining in 1992 to ninety per cent individual contract coverage ... Striking Ore illuminates what has been lost through that transformation.’ Joshua Black reviews ‘Striking Ore’ by Alexis Vassiley
- This week on the ABR Podcast we feature Robin Boord’s essay ‘Consolation of Clouds’, which was placed third in the 2025 Calibre Essay Prize. www.australianbookreview.com.au/podcast/760-...
- Australian Book Review is delighted to announce that the 2026 Peter Porter Poetry Prize is now open for entries. The prize, worth a total of $10,000, will be judged Judith Bishop, Felicity Plunkett, and Anders Villani. www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes-progr...
- ‘Motherhood is, Vogel insinuates in Mother Play, both play and performance.’ ‘Mother Play: A play in five evictions: Paula Vogel’s take on motherhood and memory’ by Diane Stubbings www.australianbookreview.com.au/arts-update/...
- ‘It is, however, the confounding structure that turns out to be the twist in Carbon, the book.’ Dave Witty reviews ‘Carbon: The book of life’ by Paul Hawken | @textpublishing.bsky.social www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- This week on the ABR podcast we feature Shan Windscript’s review of ‘Bombard the Headquarters!’ by Linda Jaivin. www.australianbookreview.com.au/podcast/760-...
- ‘Landfall is climate fiction of an Australia still to come, but it is also one that is very much about our present moment, and our harrowing, frequently unaddressed past.’ Adam Rivett reviews ‘Landfall’ by James Bradley | @penguinbooksusa.bsky.social
- ‘Together, they provide a rich entry point into contemporary Spanish and Indigenous language cinema, balancing crowd-pleasing drama with subtle, art-house storytelling.’ EL 47 and Through Rocks and Clouds: The Spanish Film Festival offers two tales of struggle by Angela Viora
- ‘The underlying calculus of fate and sacrifice remains mysterious, unknowable, resistant to simplification.’ Kirsten Tranter reviews ‘Everything Lost, Everything Found’ by Matthew Hooton | @harpercollins.bsky.social
- ‘The work ... draws attention to the inherent artificiality of the art form while addressing our cultural fixation with beauty and desirability.’ ‘Aphrodite: Sydney Chamber Opera’s modern take on the goddess of love’ by Michael Halliwell
- ‘The result is a book that may lack the typical narrative of the hero’s journey expected of a political memoir, but which is, as a result, infinitely more illuminating about the workings of parliament ...’ Emma Dawson reviews ‘Making Progress’ by Jenny Macklin | @mupublishing.bsky.social
- This week on the ABR podcast we feature André Dao’s review of The Shortest History of AI by Toby Walsh. www.australianbookreview.com.au/podcast/760-...
- ‘Stavanger’s poetry is both pithy and undercutting, anathematic and loving, political and personal–and often, as is the case with such duplicitous poetry, these themes express themselves simultaneously, almost co-dependently.’ Will Hunt reviews ‘The Drop Off’ by David Stavanger
- 'Here Garner questions the limits of love when confronted with the immanent inevitability of death.' Ian Dickson reviews The Spare Room www.australianbookreview.com.au/arts-update/...
- Read the new June issue, out now.
- Read the May 2025 issue, out now: www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/c...
- In ABR's April issue, senior contributors write on the federal election and Opera Australia's future. ABR reports from Tbilisi, on cancel culture, the Pope’s memoir, and reviews work by Geraldine Brooks, Santilla Chingaipe, Martha C. Nussbaum, Laila Lalami, Caro Llewellyn, Kevin Brophy and more.
- This week on The ABR Podcast we have a special feature. With Peter Rose's publication this month of his seventh poetry collection, Attention, Please!, eighteen poets and critics read from Peter Rose’s extensive body of work, dating back to 1990.
- Out now: ABR March issue! We review books on Ronald Reagan, Angela Merkel, Boris Johnson, Joan Lindsay and Fred Williams. There is Ebony Nilsson on Menzies letters, Andrea Goldsmith on ‘unread books’, reviews of Fredric Jameson, Colm Tóibín, Eileen Chong, Olga Tokarczuk and more!
