Australian author Craig Silvey charged with child exploitation offences

Craig Silvey, the Australian author whose novel Jasper Jones became a fixture of school reading lists and a celebration of adolescent experience, appeared in a Perth courtroom this week facing charges of possessing and distributing child exploitation material. The 43-year-old was arrested at his Fremantle home on Monday after police found him allegedly communicating in real time with other offenders online. His case sits at a painful intersection familiar to human history — the distance, sometimes vast and sometimes nonexistent, between the art a person makes and the life they live. A culture