His first book, An Elegant Young Man, won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for New Writing.
"[3] In one of the stories, a teen who "...dreams of fame fade[s] into an adulthood of blue collar work"; the narrator/author is described as a "...passive force, constantly in the midst of the action but solely as an observer who cannot save anybody", as if in "paralysis", until characters' lives are "quietly lost to monotony.
Carman's essay criticizes "arts administrators at creative institutions – journals, festivals, funding bodies and hubs", who he states are "anti-artists".
Ben Eltham states that top arts administrators may earn higher salaries than the poorly-paid writers.
[7] At the journal Overland, Emmett Stinson stated that the "response [to the essay] has been overwhelmingly negative"; however, he stated that for "...all of its hyperbolic rhetoric, the essay is a call for a limited form of underclass literary revolt – and the studied refusal of a creeping professionalisation" in the writing world.