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Claire G. Coleman will publish Enclave in October.Credit:Joe Armao

After writing memoirs and a young adult novel, Alice Pung turns her hand to adult fiction with One Hundred Days (June, Black Inc.) about a teen whose mother confines her to their housing commission flat for 100 days. In Jesustown (August, A&U), Paul Daley follows a historian who leaves London after the accidental death of his son and travels to a former mission town in far north Australia. In Echolalia (June, Vintage), Briohny Doyle takes us to a fictional regional city beset by drought and the aftermath of a family tragedy. For a smile, try husband and wife Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist's Two Steps Onward (March, Text), a follow up to their Two Steps Forward.

The youngest person to be shortlisted for the Stella Prize, Jamie Marina Lau, follows her bamboozling debut Pink Mountain on Locust Island with Gunk Baby (May, Hachette), about a budding entrepreneur who opens an ear-cleaning business in the local mall. After winning the Stella Prize in 2015 with her debut The Strays, Emily Bitto will publish Menagerie (second half, A&U), which tells of a young man on a doomed American road trip. Following her poignant debut, The Last Migration, Charlotte McConaghy again takes the natural world as her subject in Once There Were Wolves (August, Hamish Hamilton). And more than a decade after publishing Fugitive Blue, Claire Thomas returns with a bang with a promised breakthrough novel The Performance (March, Hachette).

Author Alice Pung will publish her first adult novel, One Hundred Days.

Also expect new titles from: John Kinsella (Pushing Back, February, Transit Lounge), Trevor Shearston (The Beach Caves, February, Scribe), Pip Adams (Nothing to See, March, Giramondo), Stephen Orr (Sincerely, Ethel Malley, April, Wakefield Press), Debra Oswald (The Family Doctor, March, A&U), Nikki Gemmell (The Ripping Tree, April, Fourth Estate) and Kate Morton (untitled, second half, A&U).

It is a truth universally acknowledged that most journalists have a manuscript tucked away in the bottom drawer of their desks and it seems publishers have been busy enticing writers to move from fact to fiction. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age writer Jacqueline Maley's first novel, The Truth About Her (April, Fourth Estate), follows journalist and single mother Suzy Hamilton who is troubled after the death of one of the subjects of her investigations. Also drawing on his day-job, journalist Barry Divola's Driving Stevie Fracasso (March, HarperCollins) is about a down-and-out music journalist tasked with driving his estranged ex-rock star brother from Texas to New York. Former Saturday Paper chief correspondent Martin McKenzie-Murray's The Speech Writer (Scribe, February) starts with the Prime Minister's ex-speechwriter in a high-security prison ghost writing letters for his cell mates. Wine writer Campbell Mattinson's We Were Not Men, about the relationship between twin brothers, is published by Fourth Estate in June.

As Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles approaches its 70th birthday, Angela O'Keeffe's intriguing debut, Night Blue (May, Transit), is told in the voice of the abstract painting. Neurodiverse author Madeleine Ryan's A Room Called Earth (March, Scribe) promises to "reveal something new about what it means to be a human trying to communicate with others".

Publishing newcomer Ultimo Press pins its hopes on Hannah Bents When Things Are Alive They Hum (second half) about two sisters and set in Hong Kong, London and China in the year 2000. Other works from fresh faces include Ella Baxter's New Animal (February, A&U), L.P McMahon's As Swallows Fly (March, Ventura), Emma Spurr's A Million Things (March, Text), Sophie Overett's The Rabbits (July, Michael Joseph) and Max Easton's Leaving the Plain (tbc, Giramondo)

Jacqueline Maley will publish her first novel, The Truth About Her, in April.Credit:Louise Kennerley

Look out for these short story collections: Adam Thompson (Born Into This, February, UQP), Te-Ping Chen (Land of Big Numbers, March, Scribner) Melissa Manning (Smokehouse, April, UQP), Chloe Wilson (Hold Your Fire, March, Simon & Schuster) and Paige Clark (She is Haunted and Other Stories, August, A&U).

In his first novel since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (March, A&U) is about an "Artificial Friend" who waits for a customer to choose her. Jonathan Franzen will release what's been dubbed "the grandest sounding novel of 2021", A Key to All Mythologies: Crosswords (Fourth Estate, October), the first in a trilogy that will "span three generations and trace the inner life of our culture through to the present day".

Also polarising, but in prose rather than personality, Grief is a Thing with Feathers author Max Porter's The Death of Francis Bacon (February, A&U) about a dying painter. Similarly turning to art, Rachel Cusk publishes Second Place (May, A&U) about a woman who invites a famous artist to visit her in a remote coastal region.

Colson Whitehead's literary crime novel Harlem Shuffle is a family saga set in New York City of the early 1960s.Credit:Alamy

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead's literary crime novel Harlem Shuffle (September, Penguin Random House) is a family saga set in New York City in the early 1960s and in the same month Sebastian Faulks is due to release Snow Country (Vintage). After his Booker-shortlisted, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory (yes, that really long book about trees), Richard Powers will release Bewilderment (September, William Heinemann) ,which takes our imperiled world as its subject. Jennifer Egan is also expected to have a new novel later in the year.

Keep your eyes peeled for: Viet Than Nguyen'sThe Committed (March, Corsair), his long awaited sequel to his Pulitzer-winning debut The Sympathiser; Lisa Harding's moving Bright Burning Things (March, Bloomsbury); Haruki Murakami's collection of eight short stories (First Person Singular, April, Harvill Secker) and Imbolo Mbue's second novel How Beautiful We Were (April, A&U).

British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun is out in March.Credit:Alastair Grant

Turning her hand to fiction after the international phenomenon that was Three Women, Lisa Taddeo's Animal (June, Bloomsbury) is about "one woman's exhilarating transformation from prey into predator". Other new voices to watch include: Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water about two black British artists falling in and out of love (February, Viking), Irish writer Una Mannion's A Crooked Tree (February, A&U) and Zakiya Dalila Harris' The Other Black Girl (June, Bloomsbury) which prompted a nine-way auction.

Scrublands author Chris Hammer gets better with each novel and his fourth, as yet untitled, is due out with A&U in the second half of the year. Sarah Bailey follows her bestselling The Dark Lake and Into the Night with Housemate (second half, A&U), the third in her Gemma Woodstock series. A former soldier and an Airbnb rental feature in Call Me Evie writer J.P. Pomare's The Last Guests (August, Hachette) and an arts journalist chasing a deadly scoop is the subject of Pip Drysdale's The Paris Affair (February, S&S).

When it comes to the Michaels, Michael Robotham has his first standalone thriller since The Secrets She Keeps with When You Are Mine (July, Hachette) and Michael Brissenden's Dead Letters (February, Hachette) moves from the streets of Sydney to the corridors of Canberra. Also keep an eye out for The Cry author Helen Fitzgerald's Ash Mountain (March, Affirm); Tasmanian writer Kyle Perry's second novel The Deep (July, Michael Joseph) and Beautiful Revolutionary writer Laura Elizabeth Woolletts The Newcomer (July, Scribe) about the murder of a young woman on Norfolk Island.

Sarah Bailey's third novel, Housemate, is out later this year.

There's no shortage of crime debuts, including novels by Banjo Prize-winner Elizabeth Flann (Dogs, January, HarperCollins), Kill Your Darlings publishing director Rebecca Starford (The Imitator, February, A&U) and Richell Prize-winning author Ruth McIver (I Shot the Devil, June, Hachette). Former professional snowboarder Allie Reynolds has a locked-room thriller set in the French Alps (Shiver, February, Hachette), Amy Suiter Clarke's Girl, 11 (May, Text) is led by a social worker turned true crime podcaster; John Byron's Sydney-set story follows a serial killer recreating scenes from the foundation text of modern anatomy (The Tribute, July, Affirm) and Peter Papathanasiou offers what could be our first fictional Greek-Australian detective (The Stoning, October, Transit).

The Natural Way of Things author Charlotte Wood's Inner Life (second half, A&U) develops an essay published in Spectrum about the creative process, inspiration and hard work. Rick Morton follows his acclaimed debut memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt with My Year of Living Vulnerably (March, HarperCollins) and Eggshell Skull writer Bri Lee's Brains (second half, A&U) explores the structural inequalities behind elite institutions.

After publishing feminist manifestos Fight Like A Girl and Boys Will Be Boys, Clementine Ford's How We Love (second half, A&U) is a deeply personal account of love, motherhood and her family. After a year dominating column inches, ABC's former chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici promises to Rewrite the Story (September, Hardie Grant). One of Australia's most famous playwrights, David Williamson, is set to release his as yet untitled autobiography (October, HarperCollins) as is Dick Smith, one of Australia's most famous businessmen (August, A&U).

Writer Bri Lee's Brains will be released in the second half of 2020.Credit:Wolter Peeters

Sexuality, gender and bodies continue to dominate, with no shortage in creative non-fiction that blends memoir, essay and cultural history. Look out for Sam van Zweden's Eating With My Mouth Open (February, NewSouth Books); Billy-Ray Belcourt's A History of My Brief Body (May, QUP), Lucia Osborne-Crowley's My Body Keeps Your Secrets (June, A&U) and Shane Jenek (aka Courtney Act)'s Gender, Sexuality and Growing Up Fluid (October, Pantera).

Other highlights include: Fiona Murphy's memoir about being deaf, The Shape of Sound (March, Text), writer Alison Croggon's Monsters (March, Scribe), Storm and Grace novelist Kathryn Heyman's Fury (May, A&U), Lech Blaine's Car Crash (March, Black Inc.), Sinead Stubbins' In My Defence, I Have No Defence (June, Affirm) and Yumiko Kadota's Emotional Female (March, Viking).

Writer, researcher and editor Evelyn Araluen's debut Dropbear (March, QUP) will blend poetry and essay.At Ventura, the standout is Christine Skyes' Gough And Me (May), about the authors relationship with Gough Whitlam who lived on her street in Cabramatta and whose political reforms shaped her life.

Politicians picking up the pen include Chris Bowen (On Charlatans, March, Hachette), Kate Ellis (Sex, Lies and Question Time, April, Hardie Grant), Scott Ludlam (Full Circle Power, May, Black Inc.), Mehreen Faruqi (July, A&U) and Julia Banks (Power Play, August, Hardie Grant).

American actor Will Smith will share his life story in a biography due out in September.Credit:Jason Merritt

Blockbuster releases are expected from actor Sharon Stone (The Beauty of Living Twice, April, A&U), Chelsea Manning (untitled, May, Bodley Head) and actors Stanley Tucci (Taste, Fig Tree, July) and Will Smith (Will, September, Century).

Nearly 15 years after Fun Home proved what the graphic novel can do, Alison Bechdel has The Secret to Superhuman Strength (April, Houghton Mifflin) about fitness fads and exercise obsessions.

Chelsea Manning has an autobiography out in May.Credit:AP

On the way are two biographies of Australia's 30th Prime Minister Scott Morrison by political reporters Annika Smethurst (The Accidental PM, July, Hachette) and Sean Kelly (Scott Morrison: A political portrait, October, Black Inc.) New Zealand's Prime Minister also goes under the microscope in Supriya Vani and Carl A. Harte's Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy (May, Hardie Grant).

Journalist Paddy Manning offers the first Australian biography of Lachlan Murdoch, the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch and expected heir to his empire, with Sly Fox (November, Black Inc.). Stephen Chavura and Greg Melleuish have a new account of Australia's longest-serving prime minister The Forgotten Menzies (May, MUP).

Journalist Santilla Chingaipe tells the stories of convicts of African descent transported to the Australian penal colonies in Black Convict out in July.

Historian Henry Reynolds looks to the question of First Nations sovereignty and argues for the importance of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in Truth-Telling (February, NewSouth). After discovering the involvement of his relatives, David Marr blends the personal and historical in A Family Business (October, Black Inc.) about Queensland's frontier massacres in the 19th century. Journalist Santilla Chingaipe tells the stories of convicts of African descent transported to the Australian penal colonies in Black Convict (July, Picador).

The prolific Tom Keneally recounts the story of how a Luger from World War I ended up being involved in the death of an IRA turncoat in NSW in 1933 in Corporal Hitler's Pistol (August, Vintage). Other dives into Australian history include: David Hunt's Girt Nation (November, Black Inc.), his third instalment after Girt and True Girt; Stuart Macintyre's The Party (second half, A&U) about the Cold War period, the sequel to his 1998 history of the Communist Party of Australia, The Reds; Matt Murphy's exploration of booze in colonial Australia (Rum, June, HarperCollins) and Guy Hull's account of foreign animal species The Ferals (July, Harper Collins).

Rebecca Wilson tells the story of Ned Kelly's sister in full for the first time in Kate Kelly (February, A&U) and Ian Hoskins has the first work to explore Australia's relationship with the Pacific region from the arrival of humans more than 60,000 years ago in Australia and the Pacific (June, New South).

Robert Wainwright will publish a biography of Nellie Melba.Credit:National Library of Australia

Turning to culture, Eleanor Hogan has a biography of writers Daisy Bates and Ernestine Hill (Into the Loneliness, March, NewSouth) and Joyce Morgan details the life of Sydney author Elizabeth von Arnim who is having something of a resurgence after one of her books was mentioned in Downtown Abbey in The Countless from Kirribilli (July, A&U). Robert Wainwright will release a biography of soprano Nellie Melba (The Diva and the Duc, second half, A&U) and Evelyn Juers takes to the stage with Philippa Cullen in The Dancer (tbc, Giramondo).

Also look out for: Simon Winchester's history of land ownership (Land, February, HarperCollins); Frances Wilson's Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence (Bloomsbury, May); Andrew Morton on royal sisters Elizabeth and Margaret (April, Hardie Grant) and Katie Booth's revisionary biography of Alexander Graham Bell, The Invention of Miracles (April, Scribe).

After cleaning up awards with her 2019 book The Trauma Cleaner, Sarah Krasnostein's The Believer (March, Text) weaves together the stories of six people and their faith and convictions. Journalist Stan Grant's latest, With the Falling of the Dusk (April, HarperCollins), is about the challenges facing our world. After his international blockbuster The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben returns with The Heartbeat of Trees (June, Black Inc.). Tobias McCorkell looks at Australia's relationship with class in essays Cop This Lot (May, Scribe); Randa Abdel-Fattah's Coming of Age in the War on Terror (February, New South) explores the world post 9/11 as the generation born at the time of the attacks turns 18and Carly Findlay edits the latest in the Growing Up series, Growing Up Disabled (February, Black Inc.).

Mark McKenna's Return to Uluru (March, Black Inc.) takes as its starting point the 1934 shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokunnuna by white policeman Bill McKinnon; Mick Warner looks at the power and politics of AFL in The Boys' Club (June, Hachette) and The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan follows Good is Good for You with Christians (August, A&U). Helen Garner is also expected to have a new non-fiction work out with Text later this year.

Author Randa Abdel-Fattah's Coming of Age in the War on Terror is out in February.

Books about last year's bushfires will also hit the shelves, including: Michael Rowland's edited collection of essays by ABC journalists, Black Summer (January, ABC Books); philosopher Danielle Celermajer's essays Summertime (February, Hamish Hamilton); science writer John Pickrell's Flames of Extinction (March, NewSouth); journalist Bronwyn Adcock's Currowan (August, Black Inc.) and former NSW Fire and Rescue commissioner Greg Mullins' Firestorm (September, Viking Australia).

Writers investigating human interaction with the natural world include Bill Gates (How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, February, Allen Lane); Richard Beasley (Dead in the Water, February, A&U); Jonica Newby (Beyond Climate Grief, NewSouth); Michael E. Mann (The New Climate War, February, Scribe); Gabrielle Chan (Why You Should Give a F--- about Farming, August, Vintage); and Ian Lowe (Long Half Life, August, Monash).

In politics, Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington grade Scott Morrison in How Good is Scott Morrison? (March, Hachette), Zoe Daniel and Roscoe Whalan explore how the Trump presidency has changed the world (February, ABC Books) and former press gallery journalist Kerry-Anne Walsh considers the division between Church and state with In God's Name (second half, A&U).

Elsewhere in current affairs, Trevor Watson and Melissa Roberts edit a collection of essays from foreign correspondents in The Beijing Bureau (May, Hardie Grant); Nicholas Jose and Benjamin Madden edit Antipodean China (February, Giramondo), an anthology of writing by Australian and Chinese authors and academic David Brophy has China Panic out through La Trobe in June.

Stan Grant's latest non-fiction book, The Falling of Dusk, is released in April.Credit:Louie Douvis

If we can't go on cruises, we can at least read about the reason why in Duncan McNab's The Ruby Princess (February, Macmillan). Also speaking to COVID-19 times, are economist Ross Garnaut's Reset (Februrary, La Trobe), Hugh McKay's The Loving Country (May, A&U) and everyone's favourite medical expert Norman Swan in So You Think You Know What's Good for You (July, Hachette).

On gender, power and feminism try: Koa Beck's White Feminism (February, S&S) Isabel Allende's The Soul of a Woman (March, Bloomsbury), and Zareh Ghazarian and Katrina Lee-Koo's collection Gender Politics: Navigating Political Leadership in Australia (May, NewSouth).

Isabel Allende's non-fiction book, The Soul of a Woman, is out in March.

There's also a new book from former FBI director James Comey (Saving Justice, January, Macmillan), George Saunders' guide to seven classic Russian short stories (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, February, Bloomsbury), Jordan Peterson's already controversial Beyond Order: 12 more rules for life (March, Allen Lane), Julie K.Brown's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, Perversion of Justice (May, HarperCollins) and Johann Hari's Lost Focus (October, Bloomsbury) about our addictions to phones, social media and television.

A weekly read for book lovers from Jason Steger. Sign up now.

Melanie Kembrey is Culture Deputy Editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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The most anticipated books of 2021 - Sydney Morning Herald

Peterson is a man of conviction in an oasis of compromise; therefore, he is perfectly poised to fill the gap in a world crying out for certainty.

Jordan Peterson is the intellectual renegade of our age. People are both mesmerized and repulsed by his ideas. He is adored by fans yet viciously mocked by critics. Interestingly, detractors and admirers alike seem to be unaware of his true appeal. However, Jordan Peterson is only popular because we are living in an intellectually banal era. Academic culture has become so emasculated that an uncontroversial thinker like Jordan Peterson is characterized as a revolutionary. Deep introspection will reveal that Peterson is not a revolutionary; instead, he is injecting common sense into public discourse. Unlike many of his colleagues in academia, Peterson has a realistic understanding of history and human nature.

Contrary to past eras, the zeitgeist of the present epoch is one of dullness. Aggression of any sort is viewed as intolerable since we must ensure that marginal groups are insulated from emotional harm. Therefore, speech is tantamount to violence because, apparently, controversial ideas can be used to justify racism and sexism. Evidently, advocates of political correctness are oblivious to the fact that we have the propensity to assess outlandish ideas for ourselves. So even if a position is invoked to enable racism, we are smart enough to refute said position. Politically correct thinkers want to minimize disruption, but Peterson is reminding them that life is inherently chaotic. As such, all ideas must contend in the marketplace of ideas, even when they offend certain segments of the population. Contempt for Jordan Peterson stems from his reassertion of values reflecting a more masculine age.

Until recently, Western culture was remarkably masculine. In academia, refusing to engage ones opponent was simply construed as weak. The late David Landes, for example, was often ridiculed for daring to imply that Western culture was superior to all others. Despite the intensity of criticisms leveled at him, Landes confronted his opponents. Interestingly, those who disagreed with his theorieslike James Blaut and Andre Gunder Frankwrote their own tomes. Today, scholars avoid debate, preferring instead to denounce their critics as problematic. Soothing the egos of ones followers on Twitter might produce a therapeutic effect, but it fails to increase the body of knowledge. Recently, for instance, two gender studies professors, Alison Howell and Melanie Richter-Montpetit, published a paper smearing securitization theory as racist. In response, Barry Buzan and Ole Wver, two important proponents of the theory, penned a rigorous response. As expected, feminists launched a petition to cancel Buzan and Wver, asserting that their response constitutes bullying. In other words, any interrogation of ideas expressed by women is an act of sexism perpetuated by the patriarchy.

Consistent with his masculine spirit, Peterson has ignored such inane shibboleths. Although among intellectuals it might be quite fashionable to deny gender differences, Jordan Peterson refuses to go along. In numerous pieces, he articulates the reality of gender differences,to the chagrin of many. Insults cannot deter him from defending the truth. The tenacity of Petersons potent masculinity is his real strength. Despite the grumblings of critics, Peterson is not pandering to right-wing extremists; they just happen to revere him because he does not waver in defending his beliefs. The masculine spirit cares about being right, and it resists the desire to be pampered.

Furthermore, in contrast to the prevailing orthodoxy, Peterson posits that equality is not a virtue. Contemporary progressives find inequality among different groups contemptible. Peterson, on the other hand, opines that, in several cases, inequality is a result of hierarchies of competence. Therefore, evidence of inequality is overwhelmingly positive because it indicates that people are rewarded for their efforts. In the long run, the productivity of the super-talented enriches society. Economist Donald J. Boudreaux citing the research of William Nordhaus masterfully illuminates this point: Only a minuscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers.

Boudreaux also offers examples to bolster his argument: Specifically, producers, on average, capture a mere 2.2 percent of the total benefits of their successful introduction into markets of technological advancesA handful of these entrepreneurs, like Bezos, are famous, but the vast majority are unknown. Do you know the name of the inventor of the shipping container that dramatically reduced the cost of shipping cargo? Ill tell you: Malcom McLeanwho, when he died in 2001, was worth $330 million. McLean, therefore, likely increased humanitys collective well-being to the tune of about $15 billion, or by just about $2 for every person alive today.

Petersonin his wisdomacknowledges that most of us do not envision a society in which we were all equal, considering that this environment would be the epitome of mediocrity. If we are objective, then we have no option other than to admit that average people should be thanking the talented for providing them with a superior quality of life. Clearly, the demands of radical egalitarians can only be achieved by using the force of the state to infringe individual rights. For example, years ago, the late Walter E. Williams eloquently crafted a definition of social justice to caution progressives from making excessive requests: Let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to youand why?

Moreover, Peterson never projects present political notions onto history. Over the past few months, several historical figures have been canceled due to the inconsistency of their ideas with contemporary sensibilities. The latest example of hysteria in intellectual circles is to denounce dead figures for their opinions. Such a jaundiced perspective is indeed unfortunate. History chronicles a vivid story of brutal conquests and eccentric personalities. Great men are rarely good men, as Peterson admits. So, for example, Genghis Khan was a horrible man, yet his leadership skills were formidable. Historical characters, therefore, ought to be judged based on their ability to achieve the political goals of a particular era.

Petersons realism is too bitter for the weak-willed and their fellow travelers. When genuflecting to the mob is a virtue, an iconoclast like Peterson who refuses to comprise will be deemed a revolutionary. By challenging the procrustean mentality of an unimaginative intelligentsia, Jordan Peterson displays an authentically masculine spirit, fearless in its quest for truth. Peterson is a man of conviction in an oasis of compromise; therefore, he is perfectly poised to fill the gap in a world crying out for certainty. Compared to truly controversial thinkers like Anthony Ludovici and Albert Jay Nock, Peterson is boring; however, measured by the standards of his time, he is a rebel. In short, Jordan Peterson is a masculine spirit revolting against the feminine sentimentalism of the contemporary world, and this explains his seductive appeal.

Lipton Matthews is a Jamaican writer. He has recently also contributed to Mises WireandThe Federalist. He can be reached by email at lo_matthews@yahoo.com

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The Real Appeal of Jordan Peterson - Merion West

As 2020 comes to a close, we can only look back and marvel at how we managed to keep it all together. And not just keep it all together, but to move forward and to grow. The challenges of this year on a new startup were unlike anything we could have planned for. But we took it in stride and allowed ourselves to learn from it. We asked the Ermetic co-founders to reflect on the year and share the lessons they learned.

How did the Covid19 crisis affect development and business plans for Ermetic and for you, personally?

Shai Morag, Ermetic Co-Founder and CEO:

At the beginning of the year, we also saw the beginning of the COVID crisis. Honestly, there were several weeks that we were very concerned, not just for the health and safety of our families and colleagues, but also for the health and safety of our new company. As things progressed, we found that actually, there was almost no negative effect on our business. As the world shifted to embrace working from home, companies looked to strengthen and secure their cloud environment to enable that.

In terms of development, we let our employees choose where they wanted to work (i.e. home or office). Most of our developers decided to work from the office and the ones that chose to work from home were still effective and contributed equally to the team.

In terms of our business plans, being forced to work remotely accelerated the digital transformation and drove more migration to the cloud. Because of this, we saw more demand for public cloud security solutions and for governing identities and managing entitlements in the cloudwhich is exactly what Ermetic does.

Michael Dolinsky, Ermetic Co-Founder and CTO:

Surprisingly, Corona had a minimal effect on our development team. We were able to keep working full throttle straight through 2020. At this stage in the company, we have a clear development path and we were able to execute whether we were in the office or working from home. As a team, we tried to work in the office as much as it was safe and possible to do so. Personally, I realize how lucky I am to feel good about the year and to know that I was ok giving up the usual distractions to focus on the work.

What are your predictions for Cloud and cyber security over the next year? The next five years?

Sivan Krigsman, Ermetic Co-Founder and CPO:

At the beginning, cloud security solutions were developed by essentially copying data center solutions and adapting them to the cloud. There are separate solutions for network security, workload security, infrastructure configuration, data protection, identity and access management But in cloud infrastructure, those silos dont make sense. It is impossible to evaluate the efficacy of one layer without looking at all of the others in parallel. I think that over the next few years, were going to see new cloud security solutions that solve problems across all of the old silos.

Arick Goomanovsky, Ermetic Co-Founder and CBO:

Well, I definitely think cloud security solutions will start to play a major role in corporate security stacks as public cloud environments become an integral part of the infrastructure. In the longer term, I expect security tools will evolve into more hybrid platforms, capable of addressing both public and private cloud scenarios.

What is the coolest new technology that youve seen introduced in the last year?

Michael Dolinsky, Ermetic Co-Founder and CTO:

GPT3 the advancement of AI, especially GPT3, which shows incredible promise.

Arick Goomanovsky, Ermetic Co-Founder and CBO:

Obviously, the Ermetic access graph, and specifically the combination of the identity and network access pieces. But, hey, I am biased.

Shai Morag, Ermetic Co-Founder and CEO:

Its not a really new technology, but in my mind Zoom is a very cool product that I grew to admire over the last year. Allowing the world to work remotely, and doing it pretty smoothly, is mind blowing.

If you could have dinner with two people one living and one historical who would you choose and why?

Shai Morag, Ermetic Co-Founder and CEO:

I would love to have dinner with Andy Jassy (CEO of Amazon Web Services) as I think AWS is an amazing company. Im mostly intrigued by how you continue to maintain such a great culture while continuing to grow at scale.

A person from history Id like to have dinner with is Carl Friedrich Gauss, the mathematician. I have always been very curious about his creativity. How do he get to be creative? How can I help my kids be more creative? Whats the process to be more creative? Im very interested to learn what his process was. I would love to hear if he has any tips for me.

Arick Goomanovsky, Ermetic Co-Founder and CBO:

(Current) Jordan Peterson, the psychologist, and (historical) Richard Feynamn (Nobel Prize winner in Physics), as I am sure the conversations with both could be highly interesting and inspiring, and simultaneously very amusing.

Sivan Krigsman, Ermetic Co-Founder and CPO:

If I could choose two people to have dinner with, Id choose Elon Musk (founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX) and Albert Einstein (Nobel Prize winner in Physics). Both of them have made huge contributions to the world and it would be fascinating to get to know them and hear what they have to say to each other! The conversation would definitely be interesting.

Michael Dolinsky, Ermetic Co-Founder and CTO:

Definitely Bill Gates (co-founder of Microsoft Corporation) because the company he started and the technologies they developed have been a big part of my professional life since an early stage. Its really hard to pick one historical figure, but right now Id say Alexander Hamilton (founding father of the United States), because his talents were so multi-disciplinary.

The post The Wild Ride of 2020 and its Impact on Cloud Security appeared first on Ermetic.

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*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Ermetic authored by Ermetic Team. Read the original post at: https://ermetic.com/whats-new/blog/the-wild-ride-of-2020-and-its-impact-on-cloud-security/

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The Wild Ride of 2020 and its Impact on Cloud Security - Security Boulevard

Jordan Graham's supernatural horror film interweaves home video footage and occult testimonials from his own grandmother.

Don't ever let anyone tell you there's no original ideas in horror anymore. Sator, a new indie chill-festwritten, directed, produced, edited, scored, andshot by Jordan Graham, blends the foggy deep-woods supernatural horror of The Witch with his family's real-life accounts of the occultincluding actual testimonials from his grandmother,June Petersonto create a singularly unique horror hybrid.Below, we're hyped to exclusively bring you the Sator trailer in all its tension-building glory.

The film follows a man named Adam, recently rocked by a mysterious death in the family, who delves into the history of an insidious presence known as Sator that he believes has been stalking his bloodline for centuries. The script, based on Graham's actual family and their claims of making contact with Sator over the years, blends its narrative fiction with haunting home video footage and Peterson's real recollections.

Sator is quite personal to me, Graham said. It delves into my familys dark history with mental illness surrounding a supernatural entity, and uses home video footage to create an interwoven piece between documentary and fiction.

Check out the trailer below, followed by the film's official poster. Sator will debut on VOD on February 9, 2021. The film also starsMichael Daniel, Aurora Lowe, Gabriel Nicholson, and Rachel Johnson.

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Here is the official synopsis for Sator:

Secluded in a desolate forest home to little more than the decaying remnants of the past, a broken family is further torn apart by a mysterious death. Adam, guided by a pervasive sense of dread, hunts for answers only to learn that they are not alone; an insidious presence by the name of Sator has been observing his family, subtly influencing all of them for years in an attempt to claim them.

This is as close as we get to a new 'Turok.'

Vinnie Mancuso is a Senior Editor at Collider, where he is in charge of all things related to the 2018 film 'Aquaman,' among other things. You can also find his pop culture opinions on Twitter (@VinnieMancuso1) or being shouted out a Jersey City window between 4 and 6 a.m.

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Sator Trailer Reveals a Deeply Horrifying Hybrid of Fiction and Fact - Collider

By Jackson Elliott, Contributor Follow | Wednesday, October 21, 2020 Jordan Peterson speaks in a video to his supporters that was posted to YouTube on Oct. 19, 2020. | Jordan Peterson/YouTube

Jordan Peterson spoke of God's grace and mercy in his first public communication with his fans on Monday after a year spent largely out of public view as he sought treatment for an addiction to a prescribed medication.

Peterson posted theeight-minute video on his YouTube channel and in it, his cheeks appear more hollow than in his last video. He also spoke more slowly than usual but remained clear and coherent. His voice filled with emotion when he spoke about his friends and family supporting him.

My extended family and friends went above and beyond the call of duty in my estimation, he said in the video. Im certainly not convinced that I would have the character to provide to any one of them what they provided to me. That was a humbling lesson.

In his online lectures, Peterson has shown many people that the Bible contains relevant truths on living a meaningful life. With over 3 million YouTube subscribers from around the world, the soft-spoken psychology professor from Toronto, Canada, is one of the most influential intellectuals in public life today. Commenters on his videos often thank him for pointing them toward God.

Peterson said he plans to write a series of lectures on the book of Exodus and a video series devoted to the book of Proverbs.

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Youve all heard, no doubt, that wisdom is proverbial or theres such a thing as proverbial wisdom. That phrase stems from the book of Proverbs, he said. I think the analysis of those will prove of benefit to me and perhaps to those of you who are inclined to watch or listen to my analysis.

Petersons approach to the Bible doesnt concern itself as much with whether Bible stories are literally true as it does with whether they are metaphorically true. Although he has refused to say whether he believes Jesus rose bodily from the dead, Peterson often tells listeners that goodness overcoming death is an important concept that gives people meaning to live by. The facts dont matter to him so much as the story.

Peterson himself is famously reticent to answer whether he believes in a personal God or is a Christian. When asked by interviewers whether hes a Christian, he said that as a Westerner he was conditioned and influenced by Christian moral teaching. On other occasions, he said he cannot say he believes in God because, he contends, anyone who truly believed in God would live a morally perfect life, and he doesnt.

I try to act as if God exists, because God only knows what youd be if you truly believed, he said in an interview with Prager University in May 2019.

Despite Petersons past statements about his belief in God, he declared that With Gods grace and mercy, Ill be starting to create original material once again.

Peterson visited hospitals around the world searching for a cure after he developed a physical addiction to the medicine he was taking to fix a severe autoimmune reaction to food. The dosage he was prescribed was reportedly increased to help his anxiety after his wife was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2019. The medicine also had the unusual effect of doing the opposite of what it normally does, he said.

While fighting the addiction and autoimmune disorders in the hospital, Peterson experienced terrible withdrawal symptoms, including a restlessness so severe that he wanted to kill himself.

Ive been suffering from impaired health, he said in the video. Severely impaired health, as a consequence of benzodiazepine use for anxiety, or more accurately from a combination of using that medication and then ceasing its use once I realized it was dangerous.

Peterson ended his video by thanking his fans and YouTube subscribers for their continued support.

Thank you very much, and thank you very much is probably sufficient, he said.

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Jordan Peterson tells fans he's thankful for 'Gods grace ...