Literature

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

Engaging in friendship can be an act of resistance, where we choose to create worlds together, instead of pursuing self-interest

The work of author Ian Hideo Levy, the first Westerner to write literature in Japanese, questions the links between language, nation and ethnicity

Is Australia's literature curriculum still beholden to its colonial past? New research says it is, with a focus on class and privilege

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

Three prize winners, two predictions and one tribute – this book list has your summer reading sorted

Most bushrangers are best known from semi-fictional accounts written decades after their deaths, but a new book uncovers a few that told their own stories

Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century masterpiece, now a Netflix series, shows the universality of human responses to a pandemic (along with some sex)

Carrie, Pennywise and other Stephen King horrors endure because his stories are grounded in an authentic depiction of suburbia

Robotic ‘Spam’ tins recreating dystopian fiction ask us to consider the role of AI, art and animals in society – and how they intersect