Jane Sullivan
Verified- Writer, Freelance
- Literary Columnist, The Age
- Literary Columnist, Sydney Morning Herald
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Articles by Jane Sullivan
Remembering the dead, in all their glory and their failings
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How buzzy prizewinner The Correspondent saves a lost art
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Jane Sullivan reviews ‘Else’ by Rose Michael and ‘The One Remaining’ by Paula McLean
Else is not your average climate change novel; it is too rich and strange and visionary. Civilisation is collapsing, though we see very little of that. We follow the exodus of a woman and her teenage daughter from Melbourne to a future Mornington Peninsula over several seasons, across a territory alternately submerged in floods and blasted by fire. Leisl, the mother, and Else, the daughter, are ‘different’. Neither of them has fitted into urban life.
Column: A Life Less Serious: Kindness in Crisis
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Column: A Life Less Serious: No Off-Season for “Bills Mafia”
The Bills, with preseason games behind them, will face off against the Arizona Cardinals on Sun., Sept. 8 at 1 p.m. in Highmark Stadium. Bills season is back! But really, where did it go? I mean, did it really go anywhere? Did anyone really take a break from being a part of the Bills Mafia celebrating our hometown team? Not in this family. We spend our “off-season” finding new recipes for game days; planning vacation travels around the football schedule, going as far as planning what day to ...
The artful lives of the Cohen sisters’ by Penny Olsen
Valerie and Yvonne Cohen were ‘artful’ in more ways than one. Both sisters were artists, and most of their friends and lovers were artists. They were ‘artistic’, seeking an unconventional life. For years they spent their winters on a tiny tropical island. And they – particularly Val – were artful dodgers. Their cousin Penny Olsen knew them best in their old age in Melbourne: Von died in 2004 when she was almost ninety, and Val, the older sister by two years, died in 2008.
Fair and Unfair Olympic Sports
By Jane Sullivan Paris 2024 is being marketed at the ‘Gender Equal’ Olympics. Thirty-two sports are represented at the Games from Archery to Weightlifting. Only SIX international sports federation specifically exclude males who have been through male puberty from the female category. They are: athletics (but see note below); cycling (all disciplines); rugby; sailing (including windsurfing); swimming (all disciplines including diving and water polo); weightlifting. There are two ‘mixed’ sports.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'Bad Art Mother' by Edwina Preston
In 1961, Gwen Harwood submitted a sonnet to the Bulletin under the name of Walter Lehmann. Her poem, ‘Abelard to Eloisa’, held a shocking acrostic secret that many people considered very bad art. Nobody discovered the secret until after it was published. But despite her transgression, as Wikipedia puts it, ‘she found much greater acceptance’ – to the point that she is today considered one of Australia’s greatest poets. Continue reading for only $2.50 per week.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray' by Anita Heiss
There are two famous statues in the Gundagai area. One is the Dog on the Tuckerbox. The other is of two heroes, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, who, with other Wiradjuri men, went out in their bark canoes on many exhausting and dangerous forays to rescue an estimated sixty-nine people from the Great Flood of 1852. That statue wasn’t erected until 2017, but the white settlers did show their gratitude soon after the flood.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'With My Little Eye: The incredible true story of a family of spies in the suburbs' by Sandra Hogan
Biography Recruiting your own children as spies With My Little Eye: The incredible true story of a family of spies in the suburbs by Sandra Hogan Allen & Unwin, $29.99 pb, 240 pp Biography Recruiting your own children as spies Dudley and Joan Doherty on a night out in Sydney (photograph supplied) Here’s a story about a spy with a wooden leg, another spy who liked to sit around with his penis exposed, and a spy’s daughter who spent decades refusing to believe her father was dead.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'Song of the Crocodile' by Nardi Simpson
Fiction An original début by Nardi Simpson Song of the Crocodile by Nardi Simpson Hachette, $32.99 pb, 404 pp Fiction An original début by Nardi Simpson When you begin to read a book about a remote town heralded by the sign ‘Darnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness’, you know it’s not going to be a happy place. The opening chapter of Nardi Simpson’s first novel describes a neat, drab town of streets with names like Grace and Hope.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'Max' by Alex Miller
Biography Reviewed by Jane Sullivan • Max by Alex Miller Allen & Unwin, $29.99 pb, 280 pp Biography Reviewed by Jane Sullivan • When Alex Miller first thought of writing about Max Blatt, he imagined a celebration of his life. But would Max have wanted that? He was a melancholy, chainsmoking European migrant, quiet and self-effacing, who claimed nothing for himself except defeat and futility. Max died in 1981, but for many years he was Miller’s mentor, inspiration, and best friend.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'Kokomo' by Victoria Hannan
Fiction Reviewed by Jane Sullivan • Kokomo by Victoria Hannan Hachette, $29.99 pb, 299 pp Fiction Reviewed by Jane Sullivan • Kokomo has a startling beginning. ‘Mina knew in that moment what love is,’ goes the first sentence. She is looking at Jack’s penis, which is compared to a soldier, a ballerina, a lighthouse, and a cooee. It is also the nicest penis she has ever seen. This is writing that trembles on the edge of silliness but is saved by irony.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'Kokomo' by Victoria Hannan
Kokomo has a startling beginning. ‘Mina knew in that moment what love is,’ goes the first sentence. She is looking at Jack’s penis, which is compared to a soldier, a ballerina, a lighthouse, and a cooee. It is also the nicest penis she has ever seen. This is writing that trembles on the edge of silliness but is saved by irony. The astute reader knows pretty well straightaway that this is not love and that Jack is a bastard. It takes Mina many pages, however, to find this out.
Intrépide: Australian women artists in early twentieth-century France
Art Reviewed by Jane Sullivan • Intrépide: Australian women artists in early twentieth-century France by Clem Gorman and Therese Gorman Monash University Publishing, $34.95 pb, 268 pp Art Reviewed by Jane Sullivan • Art and Paris meant everything to Agnes Goodsir. ‘You must forgive my enthusiasm,’ she wrote. ‘Nothing else is of the smallest or faintest importance besides that.’ Goodsir was the Australian artist who painted the iconic portrait Girl with Cigarette, now in the Bendigo Art Gallery.
After an end‐of‐life decision: Parents' reflections on living with an end‐of‐life decision for their child
Original Article Jane E Sullivan Corresponding Author E-mail address: sulj@unimelb.edu.au https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8723-1917 The Children's Bioethics Centre, The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Centre for Health Equity, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Correspondence: Dr Jane Sullivan, The Children's Bioethics Centre, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville, Vic.
Fiona Wright reviews Debra Adelaide and Jane Sullivan
I remember clearly the first time I heard the term ‘bibliomemoir’. I was sitting in on a workshop for a creative writing subject at UTS, where I was a writer-in-residence, and feeling more than a little embarrassed about the fact that I’d never actually studied Creative Writing, had no formal training in any the subjects that the students I was there, in part, to mentor were enrolled in.
A letter from our editors, old and new
———————————————————————— See our subscription options —— Full list of Prizes – including Major Prizes, Daily Prizes and Regional Prizes! —— A note from our our outgoing editor ———————————————————————— Dear friend, When I started out as an intern at Overland a little over ten years ago, I thought, I’ve found my people: a community of writers and thinkers who would not be stopped from arguing about politics or making literature and culture more participatory and democratic.
Storytime: Growing up with books
Essays Reviewed by Margaret Robson Kett • Storytime: Growing up with books by Jane Sullivan Ventura Press, $29.99 pb 346 pp, 9781925384673 Essays Reviewed by Margaret Robson Kett • Maryanne Wolf’s excellent book about the reading brain, Proust and the Squid: The story and the science of the reading brain (2007), quotes Marcel himself: There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived as fully as those … we spent with a favourite book … they have engraved in us so sweet a memory (so much...
Storytime: Growing up with books
Essays Reviewed by Margaret Robson Kett • Storytime: Growing up with books by Jane Sullivan Ventura Press, $29.99 pb 346 pp, 9781925384673 Essays Reviewed by Margaret Robson Kett • Maryanne Wolf’s excellent book about the reading brain, Proust and the Squid: The story and the science of the reading brain (2007), quotes Marcel himself: There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived as fully as those … we spent with a favourite book … they have engraved in us so sweet a memory (so much...
Storytime: Growing up with books
Essays Reviewed by Margaret Robson Kett • Storytime: Growing up with books by Jane Sullivan Ventura Press, $29.99 pb 346 pp, 9781925384673 Essays Reviewed by Margaret Robson Kett • Maryanne Wolf’s excellent book about the reading brain, Proust and the Squid: The story and the science of the reading brain (2007), quotes Marcel himself: There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived as fully as those … we spent with a favourite book … they have engraved in us so sweet a memory (so much...
Storytime
Paperback Published: 1st August 2019 ISBN: 9781925384673 Number Of Pages: 300 Paperback In Stock Unable to Load Delivery Dates Change Location Enter an Australian post code for delivery estimate Please enter a valid post code Earn 44 Qantas Points on this Book Shop now and earn 2 points per $1 Simply link your Qantas Frequent Flyer membership number to your Booktopia account and earn points on eligible orders.
Storytime | Jane Sullivan — Ventura Press
What was it exactly? Wonder, rapture, delight, surprised recognition, laughter – but also darker feelings that made my heart beat fast and my stomach turn over, and sometimes a frantic urge to close the book before whatever it was sucked me in and destroyed me. But always, I read on. In Storytime, author and literary journalist Jane Sullivan takes us from Wonderland to Narnia; is enchanted by Winnie-the-Pooh and the Magic Pudding, amazed by Enid Blyton and frightened by the Tales of Terror.
Jane Sullivan reviews 'Too Much Lip' by Melissa Lucashenko
A stranger rides into a one-horse town on a shiny new motorbike. Cue Ennio Morricone music. Except it’s not a stranger, it’s that skinny dark girl Kerry Salter, back to say goodbye to her Pop before he falls off the perch. The first conversation she has is in the Bundjalung language (translated for our benefit) with three cheeky crows. One bites a dead snake in the head and its fangs get wedged onto the bird’s beak, fastening it shut. Chances are it’ll starve to death, thinks Kerry.
Stories' by Hilary Mantel
If you think of writers as constructors, then Hilary Mantel is surely a builder of cathedrals. Two cathedrals, in fact: her two Man Booker Prize-winning novels about Thomas Cromwell and his England, Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), are soaring, intricate, and gigantic. And there is another cathedral, a third in the trilogy, on the way. Vast as these enterprises are, Mantel can also do small and beautiful: here are ten lustrous short stories to prove it.
Jane Sullivan is Critic of the Month
When did you first write for ABR? September 1991. Which critics most impress you? As a journalist, I have been constantly thrown in the deep end and expected to review everything from books to shows to films to restaurants. I still admire some classic figures I idolised when I was starting out in England and didn’t know much about anything: Kenneth Tynan on theatre; Pauline Kael on film; Clive James on television. More recently, James Wood on literature.
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