17c review – rollicking 21st-century take on Samuel Pepys
Pepys’s celebrated diaries come under feminist scrutiny in Big Dance Theater’s postmodern mashup
The Hate U Give review – Amandla Stenberg shines in tough teen movie with radical bent
Stenberg lives up to her promise in a hard-hitting adaptation of Angie Thomas’ bestselling YA novel about a police shooting and racial strife
Out of Blue review – Carol Morley conjures a cosmically uncanny noir
Patricia Clarkson is drawn into a black hole of murder, murk and existential angst in this adaptation of Martin Amis’s Night Train
Nuggets of insight as feminists light up Melbourne writers’ festival
The gathering tackled the questions of #MeToo head on, but there was also space for stimulating experience and learning
Melbourne writers’ festival roundup: seven things we learned
Magda Szubanski is flawless, bubble baths are trite, it’s cool to be buried in a cardboard box, and everyone has an opinion on the MWF
Chelsea Manning, Ronan Farrow and Ta-Nehisi Coates on terror and bravery at Antidote
At the Sydney Opera House’s Antidote festival, there were calls for courage, warnings about surveillance and lashings of political gossip
Ta-Nehisi Coates might not feel hopeful but he makes us feel like change is coming
US writer told Melbourne audiences that joy was more important than hope, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to create both
Australia still has time to avoid the worst, says Alt-America author David Neiwert
Neiwert, who has reported on the American right for five decades, says it’s a mistake for the media to ignore rightwing movements
I wanted to make jokes about my destroyed career, but all I felt was grief
Ushered out of my job, my mental health spiralling, reputation in shambles, I felt a deep, cavernous sense of loss for my once optimistic self
Good inking: the novel rise of literary tattoos
As wordy designs become all the rage, a pop-up tattoo studio at Melbourne writers’ festival is inscribing idiosyncratic sentiments into the skin of ardent book fans
Performance art, nudity and a ‘place where people can hug’. What are writers’ festivals for, anyway?
Writers’ festivals are reinventing themselves as they wrestle with cultural flash points and competition
The Guardian view on the Edinburgh festivals: bigger is not always better
Editorial: Edinburgh in August plays host to an extraordinary wealth of culture and art. But it’s the quality of the experience that counts for both visitors and residents, not the number of events
The End of Eddy review – a televisual glimpse into small-town homophobia
Stewart Laing sensitively takes Édouard Louis’s groundbreaking coming-of-age story from page to stage
UK festival directors demand end to ‘overly complex’ visa process
Leading figures from arts, music and culture call for government reforms
John Calder obituary
Publisher and bookseller who championed some of the great avant-garde writers of the 20th century