The Best Australian Essays 2016

‘The essay creates a place for slow thought on hectic subjects, and that is what the best of this year’s crop manage to do.’ —Geordie Williamson



In The Best Australian Essays 2016, Geordie Williamson curates the year’s best non-fiction writing from Australia’s finest writers. The result is a collection that reads as a wake-up call: from Jo Chandler on the devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and Richard Flanagan on the Syrian exodus to Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani’s inside account of life on Manus Island. There is also space for Bowie, TV box-sets and Aussie rules. Spanning politics, music, literature, art, ecology, linguistics and more, this anthology showcases the nation’s most eloquent and insightful writing.



Contributors include Maggie Mackellar, Ashley Hay, Rebecca Giggs, Anwen Crawford, Melinda Harvey, Mireille Juchau, Fiona Wright, Vicki Hastrich, Helen Garner, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Jennifer Mills, Fiona McGregor, Michelle de Kretser, Jo Chandler, Anna Spargo-Ryan, Peter Goldsworthy, Gregory Day, J.M. Coetzee, James Bradley, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Richard Flanagan, Adam Rivett, Michael Winkler, Behrouz Boochani, Martin McKenzie-Murray, Guy Rundle, Clive James, Julian Burnside and Kim Scott.



Geordie Williamson is the publisher of Pan Macmillan’s Picador imprint. He is the former chief literary critic of the Australian newspaper and his essays and reviews have been appearing in newspapers and magazines here and in the UK for over a decade. In 2011, he won the Pascall Prize for criticism, Australia’s only major national prize awarded for critical writing. He published The Burning Library, a collection of essays on neglected Australian writers, in 2012. He lives in the Blue Mountains with his family.