Arts and Literature
- 7 March – Del Kathryn Barton wins the 2008 Archibald Prize for You are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with Kell and Arella, a self-portrait with her children.
- 13 March – Australian author Sonya Hartnett wins the 2008 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for young adult literature.
- 23 May – New South Wales Police seize a number of photographs depicting naked children by artist Bill Henson which were to be exhibited the previous day.
- 19 June – Steven Carroll's novel The Time We Have Taken wins the Miles Franklin Award
- 12 September – Stephen Conte's novel The Zookeeper's War wins the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers by Philip Jones wins the Non-Fiction award.
- 19 September – First-time novelist Andrew Croome wins the Vogel Literary Award for his manuscript about the Petrov affair, Document Z.
- 15 October – Indian-Australian journalist Aravind Adiga wins the 2008 Man Booker Prize for his debut novel, The White Tiger.
Read more about this topic: 2008 In Australia
Famous quotes containing the words arts and, arts and/or literature:
“A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“No state can build
A literature that shall at once be sound
And sad on a foundation of well-being.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)