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Articles by Anna Krien
High flying bird
“Now,” begins Jonathan Barreiro, the defence barrister leaning close to the screen as if trying to peer inside Melbourne’s Magistrate Court. On the stand, police informant senior constable Michael McCarthy twists in his seat so he can see Barreiro on the monitor. “Let’s begin with the street art char—” “I wouldn’t call it that,” McCarthy interjects. The lawyer leans back.
Giving a rat’s
Treating all rats and mice like invasive pests has led to extinctions of native rodents important to our ecosystems It’s a midwinter morning in Melbourne when I bump into my neighbour. “If you had 15 minutes with a native rodent expert, what would you say?” I ask. I’m running late to the 70th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian Mammal Society, a four-day conference that gathers more than 140 of the nation’s best and brightest ecologists, scientists and conservationists.
‘Territory’
Current Issue Newsletters Podcasts Login Subscribe November 2024 Noted Netflix’s Top End cattle station drama, from the director of ‘Wolf Creek’, is an enjoyably histrionic soap opera If you live in urban Australia and have never had to wrestle a crocodile or fend off a disgruntled kangaroo, you might be surprised by the extent to which the rest of the world defines this country in relation to its dangerous animals.
The people who mistook their lives for an app
What we have lost since the internet’s libertarian pioneers failed to foresee the dangers of life on the unregulated digital frontier “The future is digital.” I heard this repeatedly when I was researching schools’ relationships with tech companies a few years ago for what would turn out to be an investigation in these pages of a pervasive – if not predatory – influence on curriculum.
Sally Rooney’s ‘Intermezzo’
The Irish author’s tendency to blend literary and popular fiction is again evident in her latest novel, another tidy love story Reading Sally Rooney’s books is a chance to think about the difference between literary and popular fiction, and why literary fiction is not better, exactly, but rarer, harder to appreciate, absolutely necessary. Popular fiction, no matter how “dark” or “complicated” it can be, often provides too much reassurance.
Before and after ambience: ‘The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir’ and ‘Endlessness’
Sarah Davachi is a storied composer and musician from Canada exploring classical and chamber music, and the art of the ambient synthesiser drone, in extraordinary ways and in amazing spaces. Pipe organs in churches are her thing: she abstracts, retunes and reinvents them in her recordings and residencies. There is a certain gravity she brings to her recorded music – 12 albums or doubles since 2015.
Tomb reader
A lifelong love for the solitude of cemeteries has the author regarding them as places full of life At home and abroad, I am a stroller of cemeteries. This is not a morbid interest, nor is it bravado in the realm of the grim reaper. As I wander a cemetery, I hardly dwell on death at all. The one I know best is the Melbourne General Cemetery. Opened in 1853, and located just a couple of kilometres from what is now the CBD, it was Australia’s first parkland cemetery.
Queering the pitch
Should Sydney’s Qtopia centre, which memorialises prejudice and violence against queer and trans people, accept philanthropy from the Murdochs?
In like Glyn
What do the passions and professional triumphs of Glyn Davis, the intellectual running the prime minister’s office, tell us about this government’s approach to the tasks at hand? In car-dependent Canberra, Glyn Davis chooses to walk as much as possible, often through the front doors of buildings such as the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which he leads, and Parliament House, whose political class he serves.
The people who mistook their lives for an app
What we have lost since the internet’s libertarian pioneers failed to foresee the dangers of life on the unregulated digital frontier “The future is digital.” I heard this repeatedly when I was researching schools’ relationships with tech companies a few years ago for what would turn out to be an investigation in these pages of a pervasive – if not predatory – influence on curriculum.
My fellow Americans
A speech for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the event of an election outcome Thank you. Thank you. Thank… et cetera. Thank you to all those good people who had hope and worked their Democratic butts off in this campaign. Democratic and, in some instances, Republican butts off. Thank you. We don’t deserve you. Really. For God’s sake, we had the White House for 12 of the past 16 years! For 20 of the past 32! How are we not responsible for this shemozzle?
Bro wave: Podcast personalities and masculinity
Hugely popular “podcast bros”, such as Joe Rogan, are defining masculinity and working hard against an end to patriarchy In the 1970s, an Australian sociologist began thinking about masculinities and the impact they had on men and boys. Speaking in 2021, Raewyn Connell said she was influenced by the feminist and students’ movements in the 1960s, to think about power from the centre rather than the margins.
‘… the refuge of art … that is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita’
A Bellini Madonna and some lines from Nabokov symbolise the broadcaster’s dedication to the transcendence and beauty of art “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And that is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.” —Vladimir Nabokov The Madonna – diffident, suspicious – side-eyes her inexplicable infant as she sits holding him before a panel of pea-green baize.
Into the dark: The legacy of Alice Munro
November 2024 Arts & Letters The shocking revelations about the late eminent Canadian author’s betrayal of her daughter might provide insight into her ability to write raw inner lives Having read and re-read Alice Munro’s stories for almost 30 years, I’ve often laughed at the laurel most frequently bestowed on her: the near obligatory claim that the late Canadian short-story writer was “our Chekhov”.
Universities accused of using national security as ‘an alibi’ over weapons ties
On the South Lawn of the University of Melbourne, patches of yellow grass are the last physical traces of the Free Palestine student protest. In the Arts West Building – occupied for eight days by the group – nothing remains. There are no posters or signs. “Not even a sticker,” says one academic who has returned to his office in the building. Of the dozen or so student encampments at Australian universities, ongoing since April, one of the most vocal and robust of these packed up three weeks ago.
Khin Myint’s ‘Fragile Creatures’
“[A]t many levels of human interaction there is the opportunity to conflate discomfort with a threat, to mistake internal anxiety for exterior danger, and in turn to escalate rather than resolve.” These words by American writer Sarah Schulman, from her book Conflict Is Not Abuse, are on my wall, scribed onto a yellow sticky-note next to a dozen others.
Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest’ by Iain McCalman
The ‘Bastard of Bingil Bay’ features on no banknote or coin, nor is he listed in any roll-call of ‘important Australians’, and yet, if it were not for John Büsst, it is likely that twenty-odd national parks and rainforest reserves on the far north-east coast of Queensland would not be so designated and might in fact have been obliterated.
Great Barrier Reef abandoned by Labor
In December last year, on the Great Barrier Reef, a mosaic of corals, sea anemones and giant clams began to emit a soft glow. Marine heatwaves unfurling across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans since the start of 2023 were being felt off the east coast of Australia, and on the reef the effect was like that of a dimmer switch being gradually dialled up. This is the reef’s fifth mass bleaching event in eight years.
Inside the Zachary Rolfe hearings: The culture of racism the police deny
7am is a daily news podcast brought to you by Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. How to listen? Website Contributor to The Saturday Paper, Anna Krien, on who Zachary Rolfe is and why his evidence could spark change in the NT. Zachary Rolfe, the former Northern Territory police officer who shot and killed an Indigenous teenager, Kumanjayi Walker, has been back in the witness box. Rolfe was acquitted of Walker’s murder in 2022, but now he’s given new evidence in a coronial inquest into the death.
Zachary Rolfe and the Kumanjayi Walker inquest
During his time as a Northern Territory police officer, Zachary Rolfe desperately wanted to join the force’s Tactical Response Group, known as TRG, a paramilitary policing squad that gets flown into “high-risk” situations, usually clad in camouflage gear, carrying AR-15 assault rifles. In 2018 he had completed all the selection criteria but was passed over twice for other cops, whom, he told friends, he’d “beat” during the trials.
The Australian teachers quitting over Andrew Tate
7am is a daily news podcast brought to you by Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. How to listen? Website Contributor to The Monthly and the author of Night Games Anna Krien on the “misogynist radicalisation” happening in our schools. An alarming number of Australian boys are engaging with, and looking up to, the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate. Tate’s influence is warping classroom conversation, driving female peers to the fringe of discussion and even causing some teachers to quit.
‘When I hear about the hole in the sky / Saltwater wells in my eyes’
As a kid, I was into divining. How could a forked stick scope a subterranean spring, I wondered. Nan and Pop would grin as I wielded my “water detector” on bushwalks. This aquifer aerial was bush magic that captured my imagination. Around that time, in 1992, the pop charts were struck by the divine intervention of Julian Lennon. He made anthemic allusions to mankind’s fork in the road, guiding the teenage listener to private ducts of “saltwater” along the way. Climate anxiety is nothing new.
Lauren Oyler’s ‘No Judgement’
Lauren Oyler has opinions. The writer best known for her scathing critiques of popular writers such as Sally Rooney and Jia Tolentino, and who famously caused the London Review of Books website to crash not once but twice due to increased traffic, has released a debut book comprised of six essays. No Judgement: On Being Critical (Virago) is about many things: the attention economy, internet gossip, the role of criticism. Above all, it is about how we communicate to ourselves and to others.
Sheila Heti’s ‘Alphabetical Diaries’
“I was sure that when people saw my book they would say, ‘It’s even worse than I expected. Now one can really tell what she is like.’” A thousand years ago, Sei Shōnagon recounted her dread of exposure in The Pillow Book. I thought of Shōnagon’s modern voice, her lists and anecdotes that follow no detectable order, when reading Sheila Heti’s fearless Alphabetical Diaries ( Fitzcarraldo).
The dread of the author: ‘American Fiction’ and ‘Argylle’
The debut film from writer-director Cord Jefferson, American Fiction arrives highly recommended: five Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture, for Jefferson as screenwriter, and a Best Actor nod – his first – for star Jeffrey Wright. Adapted from a terrific novel, Percival Everett’s Erasure, it premiered to glowing reviews at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival and placed high on many US critics’ best-of-2023 lists.
Pure things: Tony McNamara
How the Australian screenwriter of ‘Poor Things’, who cut his teeth on shows such as ‘The Secret Life of Us’, earnt his second Oscar nomination Not all film directors can write, and many of those who do, shouldn’t. The reverse is also true: not all writers are meant to direct. For the Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara, 57, it was that realisation that led him to where he is today, nominated for an Oscar for the second time in five years.
An imagined life: David Malouf
Celebrating the literary great’s 90th birthday with a visit to his incongruous home of Surfers Paradise to discuss a life in letters If a man can be said to be made by his place – and a place starts with the sounds, smells and colours known by the body, and extends to the family and state known by the heart and mind – then Queensland is David Malouf’s maker. But how to reconcile this writer with this place?
Moment to arrive
The experience of literally finding one’s voice as a non-binary person after the physical transformations of hormone therapy, and what that process meant for a sense of self “Hey Siri. Put soy milk on the shopping list.” I wait as my HomePod processes the request. Siri, which has an Irish masculine voice on our home system, is not always compliant.
By her own words
How systemic misconceptions around women’s guilt led to a 20-year miscarriage of justice for Kathleen Folbigg “They took my words out of context and turned them against me. They accused me of something I never wrote about, never did, and never could do.” — Kathleen Folbigg, 2023 Between 1989 and 1999, Craig and Kathleen Folbigg’s four children died mysteriously, one after another. In 2003, their mother was found guilty of the murder of three of her children and manslaughter of one.
The Tate race
Online misogyny touted by the likes of Andrew Tate (awaiting trial for human trafficking and rape) is radicalising Australian schoolboys “What do you think of Andrew Tate, Miss?” It’s a Molotov cocktail thrown from the back of the class where a bunch of Year 8 boys are sitting about a metre out from their desks because, well, they’re too massive to tuck themselves in now. There’s a groan around the room. A couple of the girls roll their eyes, other male students gaze longingly out the window.
Whose ABC?
Amid questions of relevance and culture war hostilities, the ABC’s charter clearly makes the case for a government-funded national broadcaster It turns out that media might have been the wrong thing to call it. Maybe it was the message all along. It’s been almost 30 years since the second generation of the internet enabled a subtle shift that would transform global interaction: on social media we could talk to numberless strangers while remaining a stranger ourselves.
The interesting Mr Williams
At a time when the ABC faces more pressure than ever before, is its new chair the right person for the job? Let’s not begin with his résumé, but with the man himself. There’s one word you’ll hear a lot when people discuss Kim Williams. That word is “interesting”. Often, it’s accompanied by an intensifier – Kim Williams is seriously interesting, or fucking interesting. Sometimes the word “interesting” is used flatteringly; sometimes it serves as a diplomatic euphemism.
Lines in the sand
In 1987, Dr Fiona Walsh, an ethnobiologist, was working with a number of Martu women on their Country in the deserts of Western Australia. In the grasslands, they came upon a series of circular areas of sand, some as hard as concrete, surrounded by a ring of hummock-like spinifex plants. The Martu women explained that these circles – called linyji by the Martu to denote a bare, hard area, like a claypan – were created by termites.
Letter from Dunkley
Several summers ago, while walking to Kananook railway station after visiting my mum’s home in Frankston North, I spied a milk bar across a grass verge. My brain baked in the January heat, and the ice-cream signage tempted me past the six cylindrical yellow bollards guarding the entrance against, what, a ram raid? Inside, a huge glass cabinet displayed innovative retail diversification: a cornucopia of bongs.
Tax to grind
Tax reform should not be centred on what we want, but on who we want to be People who can’t agree on the kind of country they want will never agree on what kind of tax reform they want. I think tax is good, that it’s the price we pay to live in a civilised society, and that we need to collect more of it from the fossil fuel industry so we can expand health, education and renewable energy. But Innes Willox, the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, wants a radically different Australia.
March 2024
Essays The Nation Reviewed Vox Arts & Letters Noted Life sentences Essays The Nation Reviewed Vox Arts & Letters Noted Cartoon Essays Culture Whose ABC?
A Q&A with our International Director Sophy Williams on her time at Frankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt book Fair has been running for 75 years and it’s the largest book fair in the world. To give you a sense of scale, this year it attracted 105,000 trade visitors from 130 different countries. It’s a place where publishers, rights managers, agents, scouts, distributors, translation agents and other bookish types meet and trade. The fair is held at the exhibition grounds of Messe Frankfurt, a bewilderingly large “city within a city”.
Eyes and teeth (Part 2)
On Sundays I wait for Lou at the street corner near the house, a wedding cake of a home. I hear the whiny hinges of the metal gate, scraping a wide arc on the driveway, my heart lifts like a boy’s. But we keep our eyes down, and it is just as well, because there is a death in this. Every Sunday a death. A mutual disgust, a “who is this dog I’m waiting for”, and “who is this dog I’m walking towards”. And this ritual, I wonder if it’s a chore for her. More servitude.
Eyes and teeth (Part 1)
Just when I hit my stride it happened. When I became a name, a go-to for content, my wit and knack for tweet-sized slap-downs sought after. Just when I had a platform – 493.5K followers to be exact – it happened. Just when I’d decided to keep it in my pants, too damn risky to take it out of my pants, put my sex drive into neutral and lay down in that marital bed like it was a fucking tomb – nothing to see here but my scintillating way with characters.
A police shooting in Yuendumu
In late 2019, 19 year old Aboriginal man, Kumunjayi Walker, was shot and killed by Northern Territory police constable, Zachary Rolfe, in the remote community of Yuendumu. Rolfe was charged with murder and two alternative offences of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act. In March, Zachary Rolfe was acquitted of all charges. Writer, Anna Krien has been following the story. Paul Barclay spoke to her about her essay, A Shooting in Yuendumu, which appears in The Monthly.
The death of Kumanjayi Walker
Constable Zachary Rolfe is confident and helpful. Solicitous even, as he beats his defence counsel to his own enquiry: “Would you like me to explain it to the jury?” And so, the jurors become a learning group and Rolfe their instructor. He teaches them about “reactionary gaps” (the time it takes to observe a threat, decide how to react, and then to act), flash-bangs (stun grenades) and even the torch attached to his lapel when on duty (Guardian Angel brand).
Morrison’s power without purpose
As prime minister, Scott Morrison has offered neither competence nor vision “‘Julia. I. Am. The. Prime. Minister,’ Morrison said to me, in a Trumpesque tone, enunciating every word with a full-stop emphasis, as if I’d missed the news cycle.” Julia Banks had just announced that she would not re-contest the marginal Melbourne seat of Chisholm at the 2019 federal election, and Scott Morrison was ringing to talk her into reconsidering.
One small step: ‘Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood’ and ‘Deep Water’
Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped film evokes the optimism of late-1960s America, while Patricia Highsmith’s thriller gets another disappointing adaptation A fourth-grader in El Lago, Texas, a coastal suburb near Space Center Houston, Stan is surprised one day at school by the appearance of two men in black suits. They’re from NASA, they explain, and they want to recruit the boy for a top-secret mission.
The death of Kumanjayi Walker
May 2022 Essays The death of Kumanjayi Walker On the shooting in Yuendumu and the trial of Northern Territory policeman Zachary Rolfe Constable Zachary Rolfe is confident and helpful. Solicitous even, as he beats his defence counsel to his own enquiry: “Would you like me to explain it to the jury?” And so, the jurors become a learning group and Rolfe their instructor.
Where did all the bogongs go?
The drastic decline of the bogong moth could have disastrous ecological consequences The bogong moth always knew how to make an entrance. At Elton John’s concert in Melbourne in 1993, the performer swallowed a bogong moth during his encore, stormed off the stage and wouldn’t return. At the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, moths drawn by the stadium lights descended in a cloud so large that weather forecasters mistook it for an approaching storm.
‘We Own This City’
It would be simple to position this six-part HBO drama as an act of nostalgia. Creator David Simon, once more in league with crime novelist George Pelecanos, is returning to the row houses and urban factions of Baltimore, the setting of his revered crime compendium The Wire. But that show, a masterful dissection of a city’s institutionalised flaws, concluded in 2008, and this spiritual sequel depicts a downward but cruelly logical spiral in the years since.
The quip and the dead: Steve Toltz’s ‘Here Goes Nothing’
A bleakly satirical look at death and the afterlife from the wisecracking author of ‘A Fraction of the Whole’ Steve Toltz is an isolate of Australian literature. He has no readily traceable ancestors locally, and admirers but no imitators, perhaps because his style is too distinctive to borrow.
‘Loveland’
A Brisbane woman, May, inherits from her grandmother 24 acres and a lakeside house in Nebraska. Her name is the only pretty thing about May’s life. She is nearly 40 and working as a nanny to a child whose parents treat and pay her as a person from an underclass. She has been married since late teenage years to a controlling, nasty man, and her son, the one person she hoped would make her life redeemable, is becoming a copy of his father.
Ghost notes: Simon Tedeschi’s ‘Fugitive’
A virtuoso memoir of music and trauma, and his experiences as a child prodigy, from the acclaimed Australian pianist In his new book, Fugitive, the Australian pianist Simon Tedeschi describes the many faces of the child prodigy: A declaration of interest here: I met Tedeschi at the tail end of his prodigy years, when we competed against each other in the national keyboard finals of the ABC Young Performers Awards.
OnlyFans and the adults in the room
The emerging OnlyFans community offering training and support to adult-content creators I’m scrolling down one of OnlyFans model Audrey Aura’s Instagram accounts, the one promoting the Audrey Aura Academy. Each square conforms to a rose-hued palette and bears a hot tip for emerging adult-content creators in a winsome font.
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