Editors of The Best Australian Stories, Essays & Poems 2013

Black Inc. is pleased to announce the editors of this year's Best Australian Stories, Essays and Poems anthologies. Kim Scott will edit The Best Australian Stories 2013, Robert Manne will edit The Best Australian Essays 2013, and Lisa Gorton will edit The Best Australian Poems 2013. Submissions for The Best Australian Essays 2013 and The Best Australian Poems 2013 are now open and guidelines can be found at http://bestaustralianwriting.com.au/submissions

Valentine's Day

So it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow and you’ve got yourself a rather nice evening planned with that special bookworm in your life. Need a bit of help with your night? Black Inc. has you covered!

First of all, obviously brush up on some of Dorothy Porter’s Love Poems, perhaps casually slot them into conversation. It’s on special this week for only $4.99.

Spritz on some perfume inspired by a dead writer. I’m partial to a bit of Eau de Sylvia Plath myself.

Read up on which authors have the juiciest love lives for some inspiration. (Although a second date may not eventuate if you threaten your date with debtors prison if they don't marry you immediately, à la Alexandre Dumus's mistress.)

Are things progressing well? Super! Take things to a new level with some Cosmo tips from famous writers.

If even after all this work the night didn’t go as you planned, never fear: here’s a list of excellent and trustworthy dating books to get you back in the game again.

What Have You Been Reading?

There's always a question that gets asked around our lunch room table and that's 'what have you been reading?' Being the book nerds that we are, we've always got something new on the bedside table and our diverse reading tastes always ensure that the answer to that question is varied. Of course, there are always our own excellent Black Inc. titles which get enjoyed too: from The Best 100 Poems of Les Murray to Catherine Deveny's fantastic debut novel The Happiness Show.

But, in answer to the question 'what have you been reading' - here's what some Black Inc. staffers have been dipping into over the Summer:

CHRISTINA, OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR

I’ve been making my way through the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin since joining the Black Inc. team in September. Over Summer, I began the fourth book in the series A Feast for Crows but felt that it was probably healthy to have a break from its ‘adult themes’. So, I signed up for an online lit course on fantasy fiction and SF, and began Grimm’s Household Stories. I also read the first chapter of 1835 by James Boyce and found it fascinating.

Some little-known gems about Australia’s Prime Ministers

To kick off the start of the election year we have an updated edition of Mungo MacCallum’s The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia’s Prime Ministers.
 
Here are some things you might not have known about our esteemed leaders.

Malcolm Fraser appeared in 1986 in the foyer of a somewhat sleazy Memphis hotel in search of his trousers, which stripped away much of his former gravitas.

Alfred Deakin was a passionate spiritualist, publishing The New Pilgrim’s Progress in 1877, which he said had been dictated to him by the spirit of John Bunyan himself. As a politician, he claimed to be receiving instruction from the ghosts of Sophocles, John Knox, Lord Macaulay, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill and (rather out of place in such exalted company) a former Victorian chief secretary named Richard Heales.

Christmas Gift Guide

Looking for Christmas presents or some summer reading for yourself? Look no further! Here are our suggestions for great Christmas gifts and books to read over summer. 

And don’t forget to support your local bookshop this Christmas. You can also buy Black Inc. books on our website. 

The Happiness Show  
Catherine Deveny 

A smart, funny and heartbreaking novel about love and marriage, sex and friendship, and the messiness of second chances. 

If you’re looking for a novel for your book group, you can find the reading group notes here.  

Buy here.

Gaysia  
Benjamin Law 

As the child of migrants, Benjamin Law is curious about how different life might have been had he grown up in Asia instead of Australia. So he sets off to meet his fellow Gaysians and discover what it means to be queer in Asia. 

From Thai ladyboy beauty contestants to celebrity drag queens to sham marriages, Gaysia is a fascinating quest by a leading Australian writer. 

 Buy here.