Griffith Review 53: Our Sporting Life

Griffith Review #53

by Julianne Schultz

Sport lies at the heart of what it means to be Australian.

Our Sporting Life will examine what this really means as the role of sport within the national psyche shifts with the development of our country. It is timed to coincide with the finals season and the Rio Olympics, and will enrich the sporting experience, leaving something to think about once the final siren has sounded.

Featuring Griffith Review’s usual blend of outstanding essays, memoir, fiction and photography, Our Sporting Life will bring insider reports from major sporting events and minor sporting communities; it will investigate the links between sport and business, sport and culture, sport and social cohesion; the life of the athlete and the passion of the spectator. It will examine betting, doping and corruption; race, gender and violence in (and around) sport; as well as positive stories of sport in regional and rural Australia and beyond.

From Olympia to Alice Springs, from the opening bounce to the close of play, from sports fields to board rooms, from cutting edge strategy to kitchen table yarns, Our Sporting Life will include outstanding sports writers and those who have been involved in the many sports-related industries.

A close examination of what sport means beyond the thrill of the competition and the desire to win.

264 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2016

About the author

JULIANNE SCHULTZ is the founding editor of Griffith REVIEW. She is on the boards of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Grattan Institute. She is the Chair of the Queensland Design Council and the reference group on the National Cultural Policy, deputy chair of the Australian Council of Learned Academies Securing Australia’s Future project and on advisory committees with a focus on education, media and Indigenous issues. Since co-chairing the Creative Australia stream at the 2020 Summit she has been actively involved in cultural policy debates. She has been a judge of the Miles Franklin Award, Myer Foundation Fellowships and Walkley Awards. She is the author of Reviving the Fourth Estate: Democracy, accountability and the media (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Steel City Blues (Penguin, 1985) and the librettos Black River and Going into Shadows.