Selected Works
Recent Writings
How a Mass Shooting Shattered Australia’s Political Consensus, The New Yorker [Journalism]
Journalism
A Bullshit Genius: On Walter Isaacson’s Biographical Project, The Drift [Essay]
Essay
What if We’re All Self-Playing Harps?, The Paris Review [Essay]
Essay
Against Rereading, The Paris Review [Essay]
Essay
A Portrait of the Artist as an Amazon Reviewer, The New Yorker [Review]
Review
Father Figures, HEAT magazine [Essay]
Essay
Li Ziqi’s Online Pastoral Poetics, The New Yorker [Essay]
Essay
Scenes From a Crisis: Selfishness Switches Genders, The Drift [Essay]
Essay
What Was the TED Talk: Some Thoughts on the “Inspiresting”, The Drift [Essay]
Essay
Fighting Fire With Fire: Can Aboriginal Knowledge Save the World From Burning, The Economist [Journalism]
Journalism
Doctors Often Prescribe Placebos. But How Well Do They Work?, The New York Times [Journalism]
Journalism
Four Dead Infants, a Convicted Mother, and a Genetic Mystery, WIRED [Journalism]
Journalism
Blood Lies: An African Australian DNA Nightmare, The Monthly [Journalism]
Journalism
The Alien Hunter of Harvard, The Economist [Journalism]
Journalism
A Deluge of Death: How Reading Obituaries Can Humanize a Crisis, The Guardian [Journalism]
Journalism
A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness is Brewing in the Northeast, OneZero [Journalism]
Journalism
A Geneticist’s Dilemma, The Washington Post Magazine [Journalism]
Journalism
Stranger Than Fiction: The Story of The Epoch Times, The Atavist [Journalism]
Journalism
The Jewish Ugliness, Protocols [Essay]
Essay
After the Protests, Lingering Trauma: the Scars of ‘Non-Lethal’ Weapons, The Guardian [Journalism]
Journalism
Out of Africa: How the Legacy of Colonialism Threatens the Future of Genetic Research, Harper’s Magazine [Essay]
Essay
My Journey Into the Dark, Hypnotic World of a Millennial Guru, The Guardian [Journalism]
Journalism
Electoral Distancing: Australia’s Bernie Sander’s Volunteers, The Monthly [Journalism]
Journalism
Unpopular Content: Outsmarting the YouTube Algorithm, The Baffler [Essay]
Essay
Meet Gavin, the 8-year-old With a Face Shared Over 1bn Times, The Guardian [Journalism]
Journalism
What Does it Mean to be Genetically Jewish?, The Guardian [Essay]
Essay
Competing Visions for AI: Turing, Licklider and Generative Literature, Digital Culture and Society [Research]
Research
How the Media Gets AI Alarmingly Wrong, The Guardian [Essay]
Essay
Can You Fall in Love With a Scripted Robot?, The Guardian [Journalism]
Journalism
The Aeolian Poetics: Computation as Metaphor for Poetic Production in English Romanticism, Electronic Literature Organization Conference [Research]
Research
How 'Self-Driving' Trucks Connected the Australian Outback, The Atlantic [Essay]
Essay
Lucky Luke: The Poet Whose Muse is a Dialysis Machine, The Monthly [Essay]
Essay
The Joy and Misery of Cybersex: Two Decades of Online Intimacy, Sydney Review of Books [Essay]
Essay
Humans Pretending to be Computers Pretending to be Humans, Winner of The Lifted Brow Creative Non-Fiction Prize [Essay]
Essay
Swipe Right: Stories from Tinder, The Lifted Brow [Essay]
Essay
Un-Australian English: The Poetry of Chris Mann, Cordite Poetry Review [Research]
Research
Like Dicks in the Night: Why Men Use Omegle to Masturbate, Vice [Essay]
Essay
Books
A Gay Girl in Damascus, Random House [Fiction]
Fiction
EXCLUSIVE! Dispatches from The Paris End, Cameron Hurst, Sally Olds, Oscar Schwartz, Giramondo
“How can something as scarily hip as The Paris End also be so warm and clever and endearing?”
— Helen Garner [Essay]
Essay
The Honeymoon Stage, Giramondo
“The Honeymoon Stage could be read as a damning, and extremely funny, reflection on the apparent vapidity of online interactions, but Schwartz’s approach is more complex, engaging equally both critical and playful modes.”
— Bella Li, Overland. [Poetry]
Poetry