CRITICISM

2024

‘Eggshell Skull revisited’, News and Reviews, 9 April 2024 [Paywalled]

‘My addiction to dystopias’, News and Reviews, 6 March 2024 [Paywalled]

‘The cost of this housing crisis: Alan Kohler’s Quarterly Essay ‘The Great Divide”, News and Reviews, 31 January 2024 [Paywalled]

2023

‘Astrid has strong opinions about the new novels from Melissa Broder and Jesmyn Ward’, News and Reviews, 6 December 2023 [Paywalled]

‘Lore vs Law: Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy’, Times Literary Supplement, 1 December 2023, [Paywalled]

‘The Meanjin that might have been’, News and Reviews, 8 November 2023 [Paywalled]

‘Love in the Time of Colonisation’, News and Reviews, 11 October 2023 [Paywalled]

‘Reinventing Storytelling One Book at a Time: Rebecca Kuang’s Yellowface, Babel, and more’, News and Reviews, 2 August 2023 [Paywalled]

‘Helen Garner’s uncomfortable spare room’, News and Reviews, 28 June 2023 [Paywalled]

‘Yellowjackets: matriarchy, savagery, and 1990s nostalgia’, News and Reviews, 26 April 2023

‘Eda Gunaydin on precarity and her Turkish inheritance’, News and Reviews, 19 April 2023 [Paywalled]

‘The Aftermath: Stephanie Bishop’s alluring new novel’, Australian Book Review, April 2023

‘Astrid Edwards on Australian Literary Prizes: Problems and Cultures and Plans’, News and Reviews, 22 March 2023 [Paywalled]

‘Shady at best, arrogant at worst: Astrid Edwards discusses Garner’s diary trilogy’, News and Reviews, 18 January 2023 [Paywalled]

2022

‘Should Margaret Atwood have won The Booker Prize in 2019? Astrid Edwards says the answer is ‘no’’, News and Reviews, 16 November 2022 [Paywalled]

‘What the books you read as a child say about you years later’, The Age, 19 August 2022

‘Audio evolutions: Siobhán McHugh on podcasting’, Australian Book Review, April 2022

‘Lisa Taddeo: Animal Instinct’, February 2022, The Big Issue

2021

‘Giant of journalism Joan Didion is gone, and she’s left me angry’, 25 December 2021, Sydney Morning Herald

‘Education and elitism under the microscope in new Bri Lee book’, The Age, 23 June 2021

Contributor to Growing up Disabled in Australia edited by Carly Findlay, (February 2021) Black Inc

2020

‘A Lonely Girl Is A Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu‘, Australian Book Review, August 2020

‘Mammoth by Chris Flynn’, Australian Book Review, May 2020

‘Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe’, Kill Your Darlings, 9 April 2020

‘Below Deck by Sophie Hardcastle’, Australian Book Review, April 2020

‘Timely Medicine: One doctor’s piercing look at our system of healthcare’, The Age, 14 March 2020

‘The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha’, Kill Your Darlings, 11 March 2020

‘Essays of exploration and revelation prompt thoughts of all kinds’, The Age, 18 January 2020

2019

‘Grand Union: Stories by Zadie Smith’, Australian Book Review, December 2019

‘Beauty‘, The Saturday Paper, 23 November 2019

‘The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after warming by David Wallace-Wells’, ‘China Dependence’, AFA7, Australian Foreign Affairs, October 2019

‘Three Women‘, Australian Book Review, October 2019

‘Bruce Pascoe: The storyteller of ancient and modern’, The Age, 10 August 2019

‘Powerful stories that confront Black Saturday fires and their legacy’, The Age, 13 July 2019

‘Stop Being Reasonable‘, The Saturday Paper, 18 May 2019

‘Astrid Edwards reviews Diving into Glass by Caro Llewellyn’, Australian Book Review, April 2019

‘The Orchardist’s Daughter review: Karen Viggers’ novel of domestic abuse’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 2019

‘What if Harry Potter had been a girl? The new series to share with your kids’, Future Women, 28 February 2019

‘Why you should know Stella Miles Franklin’s name’, Future Women, 8 February 2019

2015

‘This invisible disease can be beaten if we look hard’, Herald Sun, 27 May 2015 [paywall]

‘When health policy is ill’, Policy Forum, 27 May 2015

‘Putting it into words: What it feels like to have MS’, Elephant Journal,10 February 2015 [published under the pseudonym LadywithMS]

2013

‘The memory of a dead lover’, Elephant Journal, 17 June 2013 [published under the pseudonym Ava Graham Millar]

  • 📚 How good are libraries? @unilibrary posts these library books to me for free and honestly, their spectacular service is the only way this #PhD is going to get done. And yeah, this is a wild and random selection of books driven by genuine questions and a whole lot of hoping for the best. 🤓
  • 💉 Me today (yes, masks are back in hospital settings). I’m here for my regular day-long therapy for #multiplesclerosis, and this is my semi-regular public service announcement reminding you to check in on those you know who have a #chronicillness. Also, consider there may be people in your life who haven’t disclosed theirs to you because they don’t think you’ll take it well (and that reflects on you, not them). 🧠 #multiplesklerose #invisibleillness #spoonielife #hospitalglam
  • 🎉 May your 2024 be as brilliant as a stack of good books. BOOKS READ IN DECEMBER: 14 (for a total of 136) 💔 It took most of the year, but I read ‘War and Peace’. It is not what I expected, and it is worth the time. It shines a light on what a writer can do with prose. 🍉 I read Edward Said’s collected essays and wow, just wow. So many of these essays - written across decades - could have been written in the last few months. I recommend this to everyone. ✍️ I’m desperate enough in my PhD to have read Umberto Eco’s ‘How To Write a Thesis’, which tells you all you need to know about how that little project is going. Also, Pierre Bourdieu. I hate it all but feel compelled to read it so I can explain why I hate it at some point. 📗 ‘Children of Tomorrow’ is new climate fiction from @upswellpublishingau and I recommend! May there be more of it published in Australia! ✨ And because my first love is speculative fiction, especially fantasy, I’ve gone back and started to reread Patrick Rothfuss. I do love his world and world building, and don’t worry, he avoids the unsociable-white-guy-writing-fantasy-in-the-basement issues. Here is to brilliant read ing in 2024. 📚 📖 ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy ‘The Name of the Wind’ by Patrick Rothfuss ‘Flight Behaviour’ by Barbara Kingsolver ‘A Line in the Sand’ from @redroompoetry ‘Children of Tomorrow’ by JR Burgmann ‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch Spring Edition from @meanjinquarterly_ ‘Language and Symbolic Power’ by Pierre Bourdieu ‘The Selected Works of Edwards Said’ by Edward Said ‘How to Write a Thesis’ by Umberto Eco ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ by Christopher Hitchens ‘Is Racism and Environmental Threat?’ by Ghassan Hage Not pictured: ‘The Field of Cultural Production’ by Pierre Bourdieu and ‘End Times’ by Peter Turchin
  • 🏥 Cheers to 10 years diagnosed with #MultipleSclerosis today. Tonight I’m out with @jaybillmueller celebrating as we always do on this date, because in truth, there have been times when getting dressed (let alone going out) was not an option. The photos are: 1: Me and my margarita. 2 and 3: Me half-dressed and covered in sensors in a medical trial tracking balance and gait. 4: My sister @edwardsalexandra, Alfie the family dog, and the trophy the family received for doing the MS Fun Run in Sydney. 5: Jay and I laying on a gym mat resting, when he did a 24-hour MS Swim and I… slept on a gym mat. 6 and 7: Jay and I turned into cartoons for an MS app for the newly diagnosed… the cartoonist definitely had a thing for his pecs and jaw line. 8 and 9: Me and my MRI machine.
  • BOOKS READ IN NOVEMBER: 14 (for a total of 122) My reading is back on track, baby. @antloewenstein’s ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ is 🔥 and deserves to have won the Walkley this year. Highly recommend. ‘Horse’ from Ania Walwicz, who was my colleague for several years, was an emotional read but a fantastic one. It is not for the faint hearted. ‘Our Members Be Unlimited’ by @ourmembersbeunlimited is brilliant and a beautiful expression of the graphic form. Also, can all university staff strike together at this point?!? It has been a joy to read Australian fiction again. As for the international fiction I read, I despise one of these and as a teaser you can read all about it in next week’s ’News and Reviews’ from @bri.e.lee . 📖 ‘Capital Letters’ by J. Hawker ‘Teaching Publishing and Editorial Practice’ by Jocelyn Hargrave ‘Horse’ by Ania Walwicz ‘Returning’ by Kirli Saunders ‘Question 7’ by Richard Flanagan ‘Bulk Nuts’ by Mandy Ord ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ by Antony Lowenstein ‘Let Us Descend’ by Jesmyn Ward ‘Freedom, Only Freedom’ by Boochani, Tofighian and Mansoubi ‘Days of Innocence and a wonder’ by Lucy Treloar ‘Death Valley’ by Melissa Broder ‘Green Dot’ by Madeline Grey ‘Our Members Be Unlimited’ by Sam Wallman ‘Overland Literary Journal’ PS: Charles Bukowski says hi. 🐈‍⬛

I acknowledge the Dja Dja Wurrung people as the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and work.

I respectfully recognise Elders past, present and future.

Sovereignty was never ceded. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.