Books
Arts & Culture
Analysis
The book that taught us to think of witches as women
Written in fury after a failed trial in 1485, the Malleus Maleficarum fuelled 150 years of witch hunts that shaped how Europe imagined, hunted and executed women
Arts & Culture
Opinion
Reading how to be male
The rise of aggressive masculinity isn’t only online – it’s in the books boys love. But those same texts can lead to meaningful conversations about gender and identity
Arts & Culture
Analysis
What makes a short story great?
The best stories crackle with a kind of electricity, but why they grab us can be hard to articulate. A new podcast is trying to find the answer
Sciences & Technology
Research
Scientific tools are tracing the evolution of ancient biblical manuscripts
In biology, phylogenetics reconstructs evolutionary relationships. The same technique is revealing the history of the New Testament
Arts & Culture
Analysis
The complex cultural politics of writing fiction in ‘someone else’s language’
The work of author Ian Hideo Levy, the first Westerner to write literature in Japanese, questions the links between language, nation and ethnicity
Politics & Society
Book extract
Remembering the BUMIDOM
A new book explores BUMIDOM, the controversial mass migration program from the Caribbean to France from 1963-1982, and the creative works keeping this memory alive
Education
Research
White, male, British authors still dominate school reading lists
Is Australia's literature curriculum still beholden to its colonial past? New research says it is, with a focus on class and privilege
Arts & Culture
The viral publishing sensation that may be BookTok’s last
As the US faces a potential ban on TikTok, the viral success of Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series shows just how influential the BookTok community has become
Arts & Culture
What we watched, read and listened to in 2024: Part Two
Part Two of the books, podcasts, TV series, poems, footy matches and more that inspired us in 2024
Arts & Culture
What we watched, read and listened to in 2024: Part One
The books, podcasts, TV series, poems, footy matches and more that inspired us in 2024