The Monthly
Encyclopedia
The Monthly is an Australian national magazine of politics, society and the arts, which is published eleven times per year on a monthly basis except the December/January issue. Founded in 2005, it is published by Melbourne property developer Morry Schwartz. The publisher is also director of Black Inc., which publishes non-fiction books and the political journal Quarterly Essay
.
, Waleed Aly
, John Birmingham
, Peter Conrad
, Annabel Crabb
, Richard Flanagan
, Robert Forster
, Anna Funder
, Helen Garner
, Kerryn Goldsworthy
, Ramachandra Guha
, Gideon Haigh
, M. J. Hyland
, Clive James
, Kate Jennings
, Paul Kelly
, Amanda Lohrey
, Mungo MacCallum
, Shane Maloney
, Robert Manne
, David Marr
, Maxine McKew
, Drusilla Modjeska
, Peter Robb
, Kevin Rudd
, Margaret Simons
, Tim Soutphommasane
, Lindsay Tanner
, Malcolm Turnbull
and Don Watson
.
The magazine generally publishes essay
s 3,000 to 6,000 words long. The cover stories "Being There", Mark McKenna's investigation of key Australian historian Manning Clark
, and "Wendi Deng
Murdoch", Eric Ellis
's profile of the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch
were around 10,000 words long.
Early in 2006, The Monthly published "Information Idol: How Google
is making us stupid" by Gideon Haigh and "The Tall Man: Palm Island's
Heart of Darkness" by Chloe Hooper
. Both pieces shared the 2006 John Curtin Prize for Journalism. Hooper's piece went on to win the 2006 Walkley Award for Magazine Feature Writing.
The Monthly has published in-depth essays that have impacted on Australian politics and politicians. "The Outcast of Camp Echo: The Punishment of David Hicks
" by Alfred W. McCoy
, "Faith in Politics" by Kevin Rudd
, and "Gunns
: Out of Control" by Richard Flanagan
have given wider attention to the issues raised beyond the readership of the magazine.
50,000 copies of the essay "Gunns: Out of Control" were reprinted for letterboxing in the electorates of Australia's environment minister and opposition environment spokesperson by businessman Geoffrey Cousins who decided to mount a campaign against the proposed Bell Bay Pulp Mill
in Tasmania after reading it in The Monthly.
Arts and Letters
The Monthly contains an Arts and Letters section with independent reviews on books, film, music, theatre, TV, fashion, art and architecture. Regular contributor, Robert Forster
won the 2006 Pascall Prize
for Critical Writing for his popular music criticism in The Monthly.
The Nation Reviewed
A section at the front of the magazine consisting of a national round-up in a handful of articles, each around 1,000 words. This section is an acknowledgment to the former businessman Gordon Barton
who founded a weekly newspaper titled Nation Review
.
Encounters
At the back of the magazine there is a one-page story recalling an unlikely but real historical meeting between two famous individuals, for example "Errol Flynn & Fidel Castro". Encounters is written by Shane Maloney
and illustrated by Chris Grosz and was published as a collection in August 2011 by Black Inc.
, alleged that Warhaft's resignation was due to a "deeply unquotable rift" with Morry Schwartz and contributor and editorial board member Robert Manne. Warhaft's deputy David Winter also resigned almost immediately. Journalist David Marr
said that Manne had attempted to commission stories from him without Warhaft's knowledge and against her plans and Warhaft was also publicly supported by contributors Don Watson and her former partner Gideon Haigh.
Schwartz denied both that Warhaft was critical to the magazine and that Manne had undue influence over him as its publisher. Contributor Mark Aarons also described her editorial talent as not mature. Manne responded to media coverage stating that the media was relying extensively on sources close to Warhaft and was thus misrepresenting the breakdown of her relationship with the editorial board, and provided his own account of it.
Ben Naparstek
was appointed as Warhaft's replacement in May 2009.
Quarterly Essay
Quarterly Essay is an Australian periodical that straddles the border between magazines and non-fiction books. Printed in a book-like page size and using a single-column format, each issue features a single extended essay of at least 20,000 words, with an introduction by the editor, and...
.
Contributors
Contributors have included Mark AaronsMark Aarons
Mark Aarons is an Australian journalist and author. He was a political adviser to NSW Premier Bob Carr.Aarons was born in Newcastle, New South Wales but was brought up in Sydney. He was educated at Fairfield Boys High School and North Sydney Boys High School.He is the son of the late Laurie...
, Waleed Aly
Waleed Aly
Waleed Aly is an Australian lawyer, academic and rock musician. He has been a member of the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria and has served as the council's head of public affairs. He is a frequent commentator on Australian Muslim affairs. In 2008 he was selected to...
, John Birmingham
John Birmingham
John Birmingham is an Australian author. Birmingham was born in Liverpool, England and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1970.-Early life and career:...
, Peter Conrad
Peter Conrad (academic)
Peter Conrad is an Australian-born academic specializing in English literature, currently teaching at Christ Church at Oxford University....
, Annabel Crabb
Annabel Crabb
Annabel Crabb is an Australian political journalist and commentator who is currently the ABC's chief online political writer. Previously she has worked for Adelaide's The Advertiser, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald, and won a Walkley Award in 2009 for her...
, Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan is a novelist from Tasmania, Australia.-Early life:Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. His father is a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. One of his three...
, Robert Forster
Robert Forster (musician)
Robert Forster is an Australian singer-songwriter, best known for his work with songwriting partner Grant McLennan, with whom he co-founded The Go-Betweens.Forster grew up in Brisbane, Australia attending Brisbane Grammar School...
, Anna Funder
Anna Funder
Anna Funder is an Australian writer who grew up in Melbourne. She studied creative writing at the University of Melbourne, also later studying at the Free University of Berlin as the recipient in 1994 of a DAAD Scholarship...
, Helen Garner
Helen Garner
Helen Garner is an award-winning Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.-Life:Garner was born in Geelong, Victoria, the eldest of six children. She attended Manifold Heights State School, Ocean Grove State School and then The Hermitage in Geelong...
, Kerryn Goldsworthy
Kerryn Goldsworthy
Dr. Kerryn Lee Goldsworthy is an Australian freelance writer and former academic.Kerryn Goldsworthy has a B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide. She taught at the University of Melbourne from 1981 to 1997 as a tutor and lecturer and has also worked briefly at Deakin, Flinders and Adelaide...
, Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha is an Indian writer whose research interests have included environmental, social, political and cricket history. He is also a columnist for the newspapers The Telegraph , and The Hindustan Times.-Early life and education:Born in Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India in 1958, Guha studied...
, Gideon Haigh
Gideon Haigh
Gideon Clifford Jeffrey Davidson Haigh is an English-born Australian journalist, who writes about sport and business. He was born in London of a Yorkshire father and an Australian mother, and was raised in Geelong, Victoria.- Career :Haigh has been writing about sport and business for over...
, M. J. Hyland
M. J. Hyland
Maria Joan Hyland is a novelist. She made her debut in Australia in 2003 with How the Light Gets In. Her second novel Carry Me Down was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and won both the Encore Award and the Hawthornden Prize in 2007...
, Clive James
Clive James
Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...
, Kate Jennings
Kate Jennings
Kate Jennings is an Australian poet, essayist, memoirist, and novelist.-Life:Jennings grew up on a farm near Griffith, New South Wales. She attended the University of Sydney in the late 1960s, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours...
, Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly (musician)
Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...
, Amanda Lohrey
Amanda Lohrey
Amanda Francis Lillian Lohrey, , in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) is a writer, and novelist. She completed her education at the University of Tasmania before taking up a scholarship at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. From 1988 to 1994 she lectured in writing and textual studies at the...
, Mungo MacCallum
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is an Australian political journalist and commentator.He is the son of Mungo Ballardie MacCallum , and Diana Wentworth a great granddaughter of the Australian explorer and politician William Charles Wentworth...
, Shane Maloney
Shane maloney
Shane Maloney born in Hamilton, Victoria is a Melbourne author best known as the creator of the Murray Whelan series of crime novels.-Life and career:...
, Robert Manne
Robert Manne
Robert Manne is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.Born in Melbourne, Manne's earliest political consciousness was formed by the fact that his parents were Jewish refugees from Europe and his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust...
, David Marr
David Marr (journalist)
David Ewan Marr is an Australian journalist, author, and progressive political and social commentator. His areas of expertise include the law, Australian politics, censorship, the media and the arts...
, Maxine McKew
Maxine McKew
Maxine Margaret McKew , is a former Australian politician and journalist; she was the Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government in the Rudd Ministry and the First Gillard Ministry. Between 2007 and 2010, she was the member of the House of...
, Drusilla Modjeska
Drusilla Modjeska
- Life :Drusilla Modjeska was born in England and lived in Papua New Guinea before arriving in Australia in 1971. She studied at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales completing a PhD which was published as Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945...
, Peter Robb
Peter Robb
Peter Robb is an Australian author.Robb spent his formative years in Australia and New Zealand, and between 1978 and 1992 he spent most of his time in Naples and southern Italy, interspersed with sojourns in Brazil. At the end of 1992 he returned to Sydney.His first book, Midnight in Sicily, was...
, Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd
Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...
, Margaret Simons
Margaret Simons
Margaret Simons is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She is currently the media commentator for Crikey and has written ten books.-Career:...
, Tim Soutphommasane
Tim Soutphommasane
Tim Soutphommasane is a French-born Australian writer and newspaper columnist. He is currently a Research Fellow in the National Centre of Australian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne and a senior project leader with the Per Capita think tank....
, Lindsay Tanner
Lindsay Tanner
Lindsay James Tanner is a former Australian member of the House of Representatives representing the Division of Melbourne, Victoria, for the Australian Labor Party, having first won the seat at the 1993 federal election. He was a member of the Australian Government from 3 December 2007, serving as...
, Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2004, and was Leader of the Opposition and parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party from 16 September 2008 to 1 December 2009.Turnbull has represented the Division...
and Don Watson
Don Watson
Don Watson is an Australian author and public speaker.-Biography:Watson grew up on a farm in Gippsland, took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his...
.
Features
EssaysThe magazine generally publishes essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s 3,000 to 6,000 words long. The cover stories "Being There", Mark McKenna's investigation of key Australian historian Manning Clark
Manning Clark
Charles Manning Hope Clark, AC , an Australian historian, was the author of the best-known general history of Australia, his six-volume A History of Australia, published between 1962 and 1987...
, and "Wendi Deng
Wendi Deng
Wendi Deng Murdoch is a Chinese-born American businesswoman. She is the third wife of News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, and is leading her husband's Chinese media investments.In 1988 she was sponsored by an American family for a student visa...
Murdoch", Eric Ellis
Eric Ellis
Eric Ellis is an award-winning journalist who writes about the politics, economics and societies of South and South-East Asia.He has written for a range of international journals; Fortune Magazine, Forbes, the Financial Times, Time Magazine, The Times, The Bulletin/Newsweek, The Spectator,...
's profile of the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
were around 10,000 words long.
Early in 2006, The Monthly published "Information Idol: How Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
is making us stupid" by Gideon Haigh and "The Tall Man: Palm Island's
2004 Palm Island death in custody
The 2004 Palm Island death in custody incident relates to the death of Palm Island, Queensland resident, Mulrunji on Friday, 19 November 2004 in a police cell. The death of Mulrunji led to civic disturbances on the island and a legal, political and media sensation that continued for three years...
Heart of Darkness" by Chloe Hooper
Chloe Hooper
Chloe Hooper is an Australian author. Her first novel, A Child’s Book of True Crime , was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Literature and was a New York Times Notable Book...
. Both pieces shared the 2006 John Curtin Prize for Journalism. Hooper's piece went on to win the 2006 Walkley Award for Magazine Feature Writing.
The Monthly has published in-depth essays that have impacted on Australian politics and politicians. "The Outcast of Camp Echo: The Punishment of David Hicks
David Hicks
David Matthew Hicks is an Australian who was convicted by the United States of America Guantanamo Military Commission under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, on charges of providing material support for terrorism...
" by Alfred W. McCoy
Alfred W. McCoy
Alfred William McCoy is a historian of Southeast Asia. He is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. McCoy graduated from the Kent School in 1964. He earned his B.A...
, "Faith in Politics" by Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd
Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...
, and "Gunns
Gunns
Gunns Limited is a major forestry enterprise located in Tasmania, Australia. Founded in 1875 by brothers John and Thomas Gunn, it is one of Australia's oldest companies. It has over 900 square kilometres of plantations, mainly eucalyptus trees. It is Tasmania’s largest private land-owner...
: Out of Control" by Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan is a novelist from Tasmania, Australia.-Early life:Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. His father is a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. One of his three...
have given wider attention to the issues raised beyond the readership of the magazine.
50,000 copies of the essay "Gunns: Out of Control" were reprinted for letterboxing in the electorates of Australia's environment minister and opposition environment spokesperson by businessman Geoffrey Cousins who decided to mount a campaign against the proposed Bell Bay Pulp Mill
Bell Bay Pulp Mill
The Bell Bay Pulp Mill, also known as the Tamar Valley Pulp Mill or Gunns Pulp Mill, is a proposed $2.3 billion pulp mill which Gunns Limited is planning to build in the Tamar Valley, near Launceston, Tasmania.-Proposed mill:...
in Tasmania after reading it in The Monthly.
Arts and Letters
The Monthly contains an Arts and Letters section with independent reviews on books, film, music, theatre, TV, fashion, art and architecture. Regular contributor, Robert Forster
Robert Forster (musician)
Robert Forster is an Australian singer-songwriter, best known for his work with songwriting partner Grant McLennan, with whom he co-founded The Go-Betweens.Forster grew up in Brisbane, Australia attending Brisbane Grammar School...
won the 2006 Pascall Prize
Pascall Prize
The Pascall Prize: Australian 'Critic of the Year is an annual Australian award for critical writing and review, awarded to a critic whose work over the previous 12 to 18 months has contributed significantly to public appreciation, enjoyment and understanding of the area or areas of the arts in...
for Critical Writing for his popular music criticism in The Monthly.
The Nation Reviewed
A section at the front of the magazine consisting of a national round-up in a handful of articles, each around 1,000 words. This section is an acknowledgment to the former businessman Gordon Barton
Gordon Barton
Gordon Page Barton was a quixotic Australian businessman and political activist.He was born in Surabaya, Java, Dutch East Indies of a Dutch mother and Australian father...
who founded a weekly newspaper titled Nation Review
Nation Review
Nation Reviewwas an Australian Sunday newspaper, which ceased publication in 1981. It was launched in 1970 after independent publisher Gordon Barton bought out Tom Fitzgerald's Nation publication and merged it with his own Sunday Review journal...
.
Encounters
At the back of the magazine there is a one-page story recalling an unlikely but real historical meeting between two famous individuals, for example "Errol Flynn & Fidel Castro". Encounters is written by Shane Maloney
Shane maloney
Shane Maloney born in Hamilton, Victoria is a Melbourne author best known as the creator of the Murray Whelan series of crime novels.-Life and career:...
and illustrated by Chris Grosz and was published as a collection in August 2011 by Black Inc.
April 2009 editorial change
The Monthly announced Sally Warhaft's resignation as editor on 22 April 2009 and advertised for a replacement. One week later, Jonathan Green, editor of CrikeyCrikey
Crikey is an independent Australian electronic magazine comprising an open access website and an email newsletter available to subscribers. Well known in Australian political, media and business circles, Crikey was described by former Federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham as the "most popular...
, alleged that Warhaft's resignation was due to a "deeply unquotable rift" with Morry Schwartz and contributor and editorial board member Robert Manne. Warhaft's deputy David Winter also resigned almost immediately. Journalist David Marr
David Marr (journalist)
David Ewan Marr is an Australian journalist, author, and progressive political and social commentator. His areas of expertise include the law, Australian politics, censorship, the media and the arts...
said that Manne had attempted to commission stories from him without Warhaft's knowledge and against her plans and Warhaft was also publicly supported by contributors Don Watson and her former partner Gideon Haigh.
Schwartz denied both that Warhaft was critical to the magazine and that Manne had undue influence over him as its publisher. Contributor Mark Aarons also described her editorial talent as not mature. Manne responded to media coverage stating that the media was relying extensively on sources close to Warhaft and was thus misrepresenting the breakdown of her relationship with the editorial board, and provided his own account of it.
Ben Naparstek
Ben Naparstek
Ben Naparstek is the editor of Australian politics, society and culture magazine The Monthly.Naparstek was appointed to the editorship following the controversial sacking of his predecessor Sally Warhaft. He has also published a collection of interviews with major writers entiltled In...
was appointed as Warhaft's replacement in May 2009.