Magazine

Such a lazy conspiratorial bent towards Australian publishing camouflages what I and many of my colleagues believe is an important debate we should be having about barriers to entry and supporting local writing.

Fourteen authors tackle the question of literature’s big disrupter. Featuring Ellena Savage, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Steve MinOn and more.

Chase love through the past, present and future in ‘Devilled Eggs at the End of the World’.

Read the winning story ‘Devilled Eggs at the End of the World’ by Rosie Forrest—a journey through time that explores what matters most in the giant scheme of things.

Meet the ten stories in contention.

An interview with legendary editor Hilary McPhee.

An interview with Cannon author Lee Lai.

This isn’t the Orwell classic you thought you knew. Read an interview with Elizabeth Brennan and James Jackson, the script writers behind Bloomshed’s fast and feral reimagining of the classic political fable.

It took Dunham eight-and-a-half years to write her follow-up—and it shows. With the benefit of hindsight and time away from the bright spotlight that swallowed Dunham during her Girls years, she writes about that time in her life with a clarity, self-awareness and bittersweet wit.

Motherhood is a haunted house in this wildly original short story.

The local park is a site of both naivety and menace for one young mother.

Frankness comes before fiction in Debra Adelaide’s homage to her late friend in When I’m Sixty-Four.

In our fast-paced attention economy, how did On the Calculation of Volume, a ruminative series about a woman living the same day on repeat, become an international bestseller?

Caro Claire Burke’s viral Yesteryear picks apart the MAGA-coded return to ‘traditional values’ with varying success.

It was only going to be a matter of time before AI wormed its way out of the historic confines of science fiction and into the realm of the social realist novel.

Getting constructive criticism can be a daunting and sometimes confronting exercise. We asked writers about the challenges and benefits of outside perspectives on their work.

Eating without inhibition and refusing to eat at all may seem like opposites, but in fiction they can function in the similar ways: both destabilise systems that seek to discipline the female body.

‘A writer in midlife can have more steel, more tenacity and be more compelled to take risks because there’s nothing to lose.’

I am a liar and he thinks it’s because he is not worth the truth.

Apply now to work with our new 2026 mentors

Meet the Australian making waves in New York’s lit scene.

‘Is Wuthering Heights amoral?’ asked the London Review of Books podcast late last year. Of course, and deliberately so, we evidently needed reminding.

Sex elicits the uncontrolled exchange of private memories in this short story. But how does one make sense of what is given and what is taken?

A new year, a new you, but you’re still struggling to find the motivation to write? We asked inspired authors about getting words on the page.

All of the natives were good mimics, but in Magpie the skill was heightened to a preternatural degree.

From the award-winning writer, journalist and human rights defender, a story about a war hero who refuses to kill again.

In the follow-up to her internationally bestselling memoir, Jennette McCurdy takes the readers on a squeamish journey of teenage lust in an inegalitarian world.

Meet the new book critics for Kill Your Darlings magazine

‘We can’t keep putting books and authors out there if we’re not also putting equal effort into building readerships. I very much see it as from the same ecosystem. They all feed into each other.’

Human creativity sets itself apart from AI slop in this playful comic-essay hybrid on artmaking—the runner-up of the KYD Creative Non-Fiction Prize 2025.

‘I wish I’d known that poetry is punk as fuck. We ought to read it widely and wildly.’

‘I’ve always been obsessed with political shows like The West Wing and Veep, and the chief of staff was always my favourite character.’

The social media melee is hurting leftist organising, leaving us attacking each other rather than working together.

‘He has no words for what has happened to their family, why they are alone together at the beach at the wrong time of year.’

‘I convinced myself that my body was not mine to keep. That it was something I was borrowing from the earth.’

The  much-anticipated new book from the winner of the 2022 Stella Prize for Dropbear. The Rot is a recalcitrant study of the decaying romances, expired hopes and abject injustices of the world, and demands you ready yourself for a better one.