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When Queen Victoria died in 1901, two literary gentlemen took on a monumental task: selecting and editing her vast correspondence. The book they produced would influence perceptions of Victoria for g…
By Billie TumarkinFollowing Christopher Bantick’s article arguing that Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera is inappropriate for students due to an incident of sex with a minor, the…
The revolutionary potential of rock and roll has long been a worn-out cliché in the West, where the Rolling Stones do commercials and rappers hang with royalty. But in contemporary China, rock (or…
Barney Rosset, one of the most influential publishing figures you never heard of, died last month, aged 89.Rosset is probably best known for the ground-breaking legal battle he fought to print…
Freedom of speech – and freedom from persecution for writers, in particular – has often been a subject for The Wheeler Centre’s events and articles.This week, Salman Rushdie, one of the world’s most…
Today, lazy music writers and smartphone-toting trivia cheats can commiserate over a common problem: Wikipedia has blackened the English-language version of its encyclopaedia for 24 hours.The action …
In his 2007 essay, ‘The Ecstasy of Influence’, prominent US writer Jonathan Lethem wrote about the essentially shared nature of art and why copyright laws are a betrayal of the spirit of literature. …
The literary world has always been riddled with controversy. There’s a couple of controversies doing the rounds that we found of interest for what they say about about a new anthology of American…
In May 2011, poet and novelist Liao Yiwu was prevented from visiting the Sydney Writers’ Festival after Chinese authorities refused to grant him an exit permit. It was the sixteenth time he’d been…
Liao Yiwu is a Chinese poet, novelist, musician and screenwriter currently living in exile in Germany because of government suppression of his work in China. Imprisoned for four years following…
Only six per cent of Chinese people are happy, according to a poll published earlier this year in China. This may explain why China spends more on internal security than on its military, according…
Dissident Chinese writer Liao Yiwu has published an account of how he escaped China in the New York Times. We have previously reported on the writer’s travails on several occasions. Earlier this…
Dissident Chinese writer Liao Yiwu has gone into exile. Liao is the compiler of The Corpse Walker, an astonishing collection of interviews with 27 Chinese at the fringes of society in the People’s…
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been released from detention without trial after almost three months in detention. The government’s official news agency Xinhua reported he was released “because of his g…
‘The Peacock Skirt’, one Aubrey Beardsley illustration which did not land Bob Gould in legal hot water, via WikiCommons Booklovers across Sydney, and especially in the…
Liao Yiwu, photographed in Cologne last year, via Wikipedia Meet Liao Yiwu, an author and musician from China’s Sichuan province, which borders Tibet in central China. In h…
(Click to watch video.) The line between freedom of speech and vilification is a contentious one. That platitude was borne out last week when the Wheeler…
The Federal Court action against columnist Andrew Bolt has sparked a heated debate between those who believe that his comments contravene the Racial Discrimination Act and those who argue that the…
Image of an anti-war protester in Sydney, 2005, via WikiCommons A video claiming to represent the true story behind the Fortescue Mining Group/native title affair has been …
Turntable image by Johnny Magnusson via WikiCommons Crikey’s Bernard Keane wrote yesterday about the reasons behind the Chinese government’s crackdown on dissenting…
If bad artists copy and great artists steal, as Picasso quipped, Ai Weiwei has been paid a high, if backhanded, compliment. Chinese art’s provocateur-in-chief has been charged with plagiarism after b…
News Limited op-ed writer Andrew Bolt has been in court this week defending himself against claims blogs he penned contravene racial discrimination laws. The court case centres on two blog posts…
Two intriguing stories this week have triggered a renewal of the debate about free speech. It was feared Dr Yang Hengjun (known to friends as Henry), a Chinese-Australian crime novelist and…
A Design for Depravity: Horror Comics and the Challenge of Censorship in Australia, 1950 – 1986In the early 1950s, the popularity ofhorror comic books prompted communityboycotts and official…
Angela Wren’s Lost Watch: Power Without Glory, Criminal Libel and Hidden HistoriesProfessor Jenny Hocking is the Head ofthe School of Journalism and AustralianStudies at Monash University. In…
