Keywords: Brisbane Writers Festival
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Sarah Klenbort
- 01 August 2023
5 Comments
When a comedic story is withdrawn from a literary contest for referencing Putin, it bears reflecting on various shades of censorship. In an interconnected world where social media storms can shape the narrative, what does freedom of speech mean for writers today?
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 01 September 2018
23 Comments
When the law and the media do their job competently, we can work together to ensure that children are safe and that initiatives such as the national redress scheme deliver truth, justice and healing for all. Once they join a populist movement without regard to the important role they play in ensuring that truth and justice are done, all society is in trouble.
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MEDIA
- Osmond Chiu
- 13 August 2018
5 Comments
Whether Carr or Greer participates at Brisbane Writers Festival has no real impact on their ability to speak out and be heard. The real threat to freedom of expression for most people comes not from programming decisions at literary festivals but rather to the public through their employers.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Amelia Paxman
- 15 June 2018
17 Comments
The slow, heartbreaking realisation that unfolded over a year or more was that none of this — the heavy glass trophy, breathing the same air as popular TV hosts, sitting at those fancy tables — would change anything. It was an elaborate farce, and I was still a nobody in a struggling ecosystem.
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RELIGION
- Yen-Rong Wong
- 12 September 2017
5 Comments
A little over a year ago, Lionel Shriver delivered the opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival, deriding political correctness and defending the practice of cultural appropriation by white writers. This year's festival didn't attract real controversy, but the memory of last year still lingered, and it's clear that parts of that mentality live on.
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AUSTRALIA
- Neve Mahoney
- 25 November 2016
9 Comments
In a utopian world, free of racism and bigotry, there would be no problem with writers having complete artistic freedom. It becomes a problem when, for example, a white author takes the experiences of a Ugandan woman and writes a novel that becomes an acclaimed bestseller, while writers of colour struggle to get published and have their own stories told. This is white privilege at its finest. Morally, should the privileged be able to profit from the experiences and oppression of another culture?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 05 October 2016
1 Comment
At the opening of the Environmental Film Festival Australia in Melbourne last week, festival patron and former Greens senator Bob Brown highlighted the movement against oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight. He painted a picture wherein a major spill in the region could lead to an environmental disaster stretching as far from the site as the NSW coast. His words make the release of Deepwater Horizon, about the disaster that led to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, even more timely.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Esther Anatolitis
- 04 October 2016
10 Comments
Who owns a cultural object? Who has the right to determine cultural values? And how can public institutions exercise cultural responsibility? It's a timely set of questions as we consider the implications of the National Gallery of Australia's return of ancient Indian sculptures, the British Museum's refusal to return Indigenous objects, or Lionel Shriver's rejection of minority cultural identities. Each of these unleashes complex, painful consequences that can undermine cultural value or cultural safety.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 23 July 2014
1 Comment
'Rohan provides a detailed and accurate analysis and history of the word games that have gone on between the Vatican and the Latin American bishops and theologians wrestling with the concept of the preferential option for the poor.' Frank Brennan launches The Preferential Option for the Poor: A Short History and a Reading Based on the Thought of Bernard Lonergan, by Rohan Michael Curnow.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 12 April 2012
23 Comments
'God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,' quips the pastor from the pulpit. The congregation finds this hilarious, but not young gay Christian Ben, who feels secretly shamed. Later, when a string of Christian counselling programs fail to 'heal' his homosexuality, Ben takes to his wrists with a razor blade.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
She would be aghast, at the weeping litany of my sins... From the moment the apron string is cut, we are free to be. And to bring, make or undo, whatever the hell we want to.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Paul Dignam and Jonathan Hadwen
- 07 June 2011
1 Comment
Jesus said 'G'day mate, why don'tcher try a cast off the point there, I had a few bites just now, reckon you'll catch a feed, at least. I'll get the billy on ...'
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