The State of the (Writing) Nation is Writers Victoria’s annual address from a prominent Australian writer. It's a chance to reflect on what's happening and where we're heading in Australian literature and publishing. Award-winning novelist, memoirist and editor Alice Pung will give the 2021 address.

William Hazlitt wrote that ‘the smallest pain in our little finger causes us more concern…

Cigarettes are rapidly falling out of favour with everyone from policy-makers to smokers themselves. Philip Morris – the company behind Marlboro – have made ‘a dramatic decision’: they are ceasing operations as a cigarette company and relaunching as a health enterprise, dedicated to convincing the one billion smokers of the world to quit. Enter the ever-curious John Safran, the writer…

What kind of stories do we tell about men? Is there enough space within these stories to simultaneously hold men accountable, and encourage them to grow?

Research shows that societal pressure on men to conform to rigid ideals of masculinity (dominance, control, risk-taking, hypersexuality, heterosexuality, stoicism and aggression) is prevalent and dangerous, not just to men themselves, but to the…

In 2020, the Broadly Speaking series launched with a powerful conversation with distinguished professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson, in recognition of the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking book, Talkin’ Up to the White Woman. Throughout a year of insightful, challenging and engaging conversations about contemporary feminism and gender in colonial Australia, Moreton-Robinson’s text has been a reminder of the ways some…

A potato flew around my room before you came, Pepe the Frog NFT, black TikTok creators on strike, Barbz calling out Lana stans, everything happens so much. Did Kim Kardashian break the internet or has the internet already broken us?

The internet once promised to improve our lives: cultural democracy, limitless information and instant global connectivity. Now we’re downloading movies…

Set across present-day Melbourne, 1970s India and a not-too-distant future where climate change has ravaged both landscape and human hope, In Moonland is a portrait of one family across three generations, all grappling with their own mortality. This second novel from Melbourne writer Miles Allinson (Fever of Animals) has been praised by Helen Garner for its 'curious daring beauty’.

In…