Literary essays Books

A doctor reflects on his profession and his experience with patients in this brilliant essay collection that expands on his wildly popular Twitter poems.In medicine, every patient presents with a story. “Once upon a time I was well, and then . . . ”...

‘One of the greatest writers of our time.’ Toni Morrison‘You Don’t Know Us Negroes adds immeasurably to our understanding of Hurston … her words make it impossible for readers to consider her anything but one of the intellectual giants of the 20th...

The first essay collection from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.‘This trenchant, unrepentant collection reminds you that she’s a brilliant writer… Order a copy in case she’s cancelled by Christmas’ THE TIMES (Book of the Year) ‘You may...

From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders, a lyrical book of short essays about food offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and little-known facts about natureIn Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee...

'This book is a glowing achievement by one of the best essayists of her generation' Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff‘Witty, fresh and full of life’ Liv Little‘I can’t recommend more highly… it’s one of those books that I just want to press in the hands of...

'I laughed, I cried and then I laughed again' LENA DUNHAM'Smart and funny … reminds me of the best of Nora Ephron’ GUARDIANWriter, actor, and director Desiree Akhavan shares the stories she was told to shut up about—hilarious, horny, heartbreaking tales...

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: LA Times * Boston Globe * The Millions * LitHub * ShondalandBy the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally...

AN NPR BOOK-OF-THE-DAY • A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STAFF PICK • A NYLON MUST-READ • A FORTUNE NEW BOOK TO READ IN AUGUST“And, at the center of it all, am I actually nice or am I just performing a role I think I’m expected to play” Mia Mercado is a...

"Excellent....Taken as a whole, the volume moves beyond food’s sensory pleasures to investigate it as a cultural vessel, a symbol of inequality, and more. It’s a standout addition to the series." —Publisher's Weekly (starred review)A collection of the...

In the midst of the hurt and the mundane, the questions and the not yets, you can forget just how far you have come. This illustrated collection of poetry and essays invites you to reclaim moments of brokenness, division, and pain and re-envision them...

**Shortlisted, Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2024, Non-fiction**This book is a collected works of one of Australia's most accomplished media personalities. Chronicling his career since 2007, Close to the Subject presents a selection of pieces...

In 2023 the Sydney Review of Books celebrates a decade online and the publication of more than a thousand essays and longform reviews of Australian and international literature. Over these ten years the SRB has cleared a unique space for serious...

Final work by internationally acclaimed Australian author Gerald Murnane, reflecting on his career as a writer, and the fifteen books which have led critics to praise him as 'a genius on the level of Beckett'.A book which will appeal equally to Murnane's...

New collection of essays on the relationships between humans and animals, by Vanessa Berry, author of Mirror Sydney, and the memoir of adolescence Ninety9.Gentle and Fierce focuses on the world of animals, and the way their presence has shaped the...

Antipodean China is a collection of essays drawn from a series of encounters between Australian and Chinese writers, which took place in China and Australia over a ten-year period from 2011. The encounters could be defensive, especially given the need to...

Novelist Fiona McGregor'snew book, Buried Not Dead, is a collection of essays on art, literature and performance, sexuality, activism and the life of the city. It features performance artists, writers, dancers, tattooists and DJs, some of them famous,...

Carment is one of Australia's best-known plein air artists. It is his distinctive mark as a writer that he writes as he paints from life capturing the likeness of a particular place in time, remaining faithful to the moment when he sees...

Through delicately wrought essays and hand-drawn illustrated maps, Mirror Sydney charts an alternative view of the harbour city, to show a place of suburban mysteries, hidden stories, and anachronistic sites. Vanessa Berry, one of Australia's most acute...

Poetry and the Trace is a compelling collection of critical essays by poets and scholars, offering fresh and teasing reflections on the art of contemporary poetry. As the volume's title declares, poetry is enmeshed with 'the trace', Derrida's 'mark of...

This book brings together essays from leading Australian and international historians, in an analysis of the monumental Friendly Mission: the Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829-1834, edited by NJB Plomley and republished in...

Animal Dreams collects David Brooks' thought-provoking essays about how humans think, dream and write about other species. Brooks examines how animals have featured in Australian literature and culture, from The Man from Snowy River to Phar Lap to...

We are living in the moment of the essay. The past two decades have witnessed an explosion in essays that interrogate personal experience; contemporary Australian writers are using their lives to think through the ways we connect, remember, and live,...

Selected Prose of Dorothy Hewett offers readers a stunning array of Hewett's writings on literature, theatre and politics. It is both an engaging glimpse into Australian political history and activism and an enlightening point of access to one of our...

Randolph Stow (19352010) was a writer who resisted critical containment. His complete oeuvre of eight novels, a children's novella, a libretto, translation work and several collections of poetry presents an accomplished and impressive literary legacy.The...

This book is not a guide. It won't give advice on birth, breastfeeding, or bonding. And it's not aimed solely at parents. Dangerous Ideas about Mothers is a book about motherhood as a cultural construct.Mothers are a topic on which almost everybody has...

Some plants have sustained empires and sparked wars. Some have ignited public outrage. Think tea, opium, tulips and thistles. Yes, thistles. In 1852 South Australia passed its Thistle Act, probably the first weed control legislation anywhere in the world...

An inviting guide to reclaiming your time and discovering the wondrous pleasures of slow living.What beautiful possibilities await us when we slow down?For author and Slow Stories podcast host Rachel Schwartzmann, sl

In this debut collection of essays, lists, musings, and quips, Zimmerman delicately walks the fine line between tear-jerking and knee-slapping, and does so with aplomb. Through this memoir-esque exploration of selfhood, Zach unveils the pros and cons of...

From the author of paper girl and the knives that made her comes unfold, a poetic, aching, and hopeful retelling of realizations made while on the journey to healing from both loss of love and loss of self.Through poetry and short essays, unfold shows...

For readers of Meghan O’Rourke’s The Invisible Kingdom, Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias, and Melissa Febos’s Girlhood, a powerful and deeply personal memoir in essays that sheds light on the silent epidemic of head trauma.Annie Liontas...

The former Sex & Relationships Editor for Cosmopolitan and host of the wildly popular comedy show Tinder Live with Lane Moore presents her poignant, funny, and deeply moving first book.Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive...

The vital words of Alexander Hamilton, including essays, private correspondence, and public statements.Alexander Hamilton is best known as the United States’ first Secretary of the Treasury and the author of the majority of The Federalist Papers, a...

'I awoke from a deep sleep I had taken under the shade of a tree in a field at the outskirts of a dark wood, without remembering how I had gotten there, or, indeed, where it was exactly, I had gotten.'So begins a most unusual odyssey, in which a writer...

In Case of Loss gathers the best of Lutz Seiler's non-fiction from the last twenty-five years, revealing essays that are different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry. Seiler's anecdotal and associative pieces throw fascinating light on...

Taking in turn a scientific, feminist, economic and public-health perspective, this book gleefully demolishes much of the received wisdom surrounding processed food. Anastacia Marx de Salcedo argues that most of these foods are fairly healthy, and their...

Openings & Outings brings together over forty pieces from the long and distinguished career of the writer and commentator David Pryce-Jones. Taking us from a meeting with Rudolf Hess's widow, to the slums of Tangier, to the front lines of the...

A selection of the greatest sentences by the master, Ernest Hemingway. Sentences that can take a reader's breath away and are not easily forgotten. Each sentence has been selected and examined by authors such as Elizabeth Strout, Sherman Alexie, Paula...

Uncovering the pernicious narratives white people create to justify white supremacy and sustain racist oppressionThe police murders of two Black men, Philando Castile and George Floyd, frame this searing exploration of the historical and fictional...

Like the answer to a riddle, status is all around us, but it can't always be seen or heard. The silent switchboard behind our professional and personal interactions, status dictates our place on the guest list, in the room, at the table; through its...

What is the best way to tell a story?In this anthology, the first-ever collection of essays by innovative, cutting-edge writers on the theme of narration, forty of the continent's top experimental writers describe their engagement with language,...

Pier Paolo Pasolini (19221975) was a major cultural figure in post-WWII Italy, well-known as a poet, novelist, communist intellectual, and filmmaker. In Danger is the first anthology in English devoted to his political and literary essays, with a...

Suzanne Joinson grew up in a 1980s council estate in Crewe, where her parents were followers of The Divine Light Mission cult. This clash of class and counterculture destroyed her family, leaving a legacy of turmoil and poverty.Years later, she attempts...

An extraordinary memoir of anticipatory grief, seventy-two minutes of life and a silent maternity leave, from artist and academic Tamarin Norwood.A few months into pregnancy, Tamarin Norwood learned that the baby she was carrying would not live. Over the...

The never-before-published novel by Charmian Clift.'In those days the end of the morning was always marked by the quarry whistle blowing the noon knock-off.Since everybody was out of bed very early, morning then was a long time, or even, if you came to...

Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes is a revelatory collection of personal essays that subverts the stereotypes and transcends the platitudes of family life to examine motherhood with blistering insight.Documenting the birth and early life of her three...

The past, famously, is a foreign country - but in the twenty-first century, it's one in which we increasingly seek solace. No matter the relentless pace of technological innovation and the digitisation of everything from money to media our appetites for...

Incisive, compassionate, and revelatory reporting from America's death row, named a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist for feature writing. An Atlantic Edition, featuring long-form journalism by Atlantic writers, drawn from contemporary articles or classic...