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:
“As far as the arts and the sciences are concerned, the German mind appreciates most highly that which it does not understand of the latter, and that which it does not enjoy of the former.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Poetry, and Picture, are Arts of a like nature; and both are busie about imitation. It was excellently said of Plutarch, Poetry was a speaking Picture, and Picture a mute Poesie. For they both invent, faine, and devise many things, and accommodate all they invent to the use, and service of nature. Yet of the two, the Pen is more noble, than the Pencill. For that can speake to the Understanding; the other, but to the Sense.”
—Ben Jonson (1573–1637)
“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)