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Jen Webb

Jen Webb

The Conversation

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Lee Lai’s Cannon is the first graphic novel to win the Stella Prize

This is Lee Lai’s second book to be shortlisted for the Stella Prize, and her first win.

13.05.2026 10

The Conversation

Jen Webb

Violence, loss and bright threads of kindness: your guide to the 2026 Stella shortlist

The six books on this year’s Stella shortlist range widely, including graphic novels, poetry, novels and memoir. But they have one thing in common:...

13.05.2026 20

The Conversation

Jen Webb

Sororicidal: this witty sisterhood novel knows children can be awful

Beautiful and witty, Edwina Preston’s novel Sorocidal reveals an unnervingly precise understanding of the dark side of childhood.

01.05.2026 10

The Conversation

Jen Webb

Sororcidal: this witty sisterhood novel knows children can be awful

Beautiful and witty, family novel Sorocidal reveals an unnervingly precise understanding of the dark side of childhood.

01.05.2026 20

The Conversation

Jen Webb

Words can’t save a life – but they can capture it. Debra Adelaide farewells friend Gabrielle Carey

Debra Adelaide’s new book, When I Am Sixty-Four, is a complex, devastating and often funny love letter to her friend, the late Gabrielle Carey.

26.03.2026 20

The Conversation

Jen Webb

‘Oh, the fog lying like a blanket over this sad town’: The Mushroom Tapes sees the humanity in an inhumane story

15.11.2025 20

Pearls and Irritations

Jen Webb

‘Oh, the fog lying like a blanket over this sad town’: The Mushroom Tapes sees the humanity in an inhumane story

Literary journalists Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein take us inside their conversations on the mushroom trial, writing and notorious...

10.11.2025 20

The Conversation

Jen Webb

Mythical, slippery, shapeshifting: Grief is the Thing With Feathers transforms tragedy into literature

Max Porter’s stories of people on the margins are told in fragments, flickering images, surprising swirls of language and wit.

25.07.2025 20

The Conversation

Jen Webb

‘Radical acceptance’: Yiyun Li lost both her sons to suicide. Her rigorous memoir reveals her as a very special writer

‘If an abyss is where I shall be for the rest of my life’, writes Yiyun Li, ‘the abyss is my habitat.’ Her book is a major contribution to...

19.06.2025 30

The Conversation

Jen Webb