Mark Rubbo
Mark Rubbo is chairman of Readings. He is a past president of the Australian Booksellers Association and was founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival. In 2006 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.
Blog post — 3 Sep 2019
Support Indigenous Literacy Day in 2019
Today is Indigenous Literacy Day.
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) does amazing work to foster literacy in remote communities around Australia and close the gap on literacy and numeracy. Research…
Review — 23 Sep 2019
Maybe the Horse Will Talk by Elliot Perlman
It’s a long time since Elliot Perlman’s last novel The Street Sweeper and it’s so good to see him back. Perlman’s work looks at social issues through the prism of…
Blog post — 26 Aug 2019
Mark's Say: September 2019
My father was a scientist and head of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Bacteriology,affectionately known as ‘The Bug School’. It was located in an old building on Swanston Street…
Review — 23 Sep 2019
Other People's Houses by Hilary McPhee
At one time, Hilary McPhee’s life was in upheaval and she was struggling with the illness and death of her parents, a bout of cancer and the end of a…
Review — 19 Aug 2019
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe’s examination of the Troubles in Northern Ireland from thelate 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, won the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political…
Blog post — 29 Jul 2019
Mark's Say: August 2019
I hate this time of year, the end of the financial year. It’s when we find out how many books have been stolen from our shelves. You’d think I’d get…
Review — 21 Jul 2019
Harry Seidler's Umbrella by Joe Rollo
The first thing that strikes you about this book is its sheer beauty. Joe Rollo got his friend andgraphic designer Garry Emery to design the book and together they agonised…
Review — 23 Sep 2019
Finding the Heart of the Nation by Thomas Mayor
In 2017, over two hundred and fifty Indigenous representatives from around the country gathered at Uluru and unanimously adopted the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The last paragraph reads, ‘In…
Blog post — 1 Jul 2019
Mark's Say: July 2019
My good friend Robert Gott is an exceptional crime writer with six books under his belt. I first came across Robert when he was an English teacher at Princes Hill…
Review — 25 Jun 2019
Travellers by Helon Habila
A unnamed narrator accompanies his artist wife who’s been awarded a fellowship in Berlin. She is American, he is Nigerian. After a miscarriage they both feel unmoored; they both react…