AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This article examines the role of book publishing outside the cultural centres, where the lack of access to the gatekeepers of cultural production, such as literary agents, editors and publishers, has inhibited both the publishers' and region's reach into the public imagination.
It takes Western Australia as a case study, analysing the impact of geographical regionalism on the processes of book production and publication. Western Australia is infrequently represented in the cultura record, much less in those aspects of the cultural record that are transmitted overseas.
This imbalance in 'cultural currency' arises because regions are at least in part defined by their ability to participate in what Pierre Bourdieu has deemed the 'field of cultural production'. In the case of print culture, this field includes writers, literary agents, editors, publishers, government arts organisations, the media, schools, and book retailers, just to name a few.
This article pays particular attention to Western Australia's three major publishing houses (Fremantle Press, University of Western Australia Press, and the publisher of Indigenous literature, Magabala Books), as well as those Western Australian writers who have achieved the greatest international success, such as Tim Winton and Elizabeth Jolley. It demonstrates that the awareness of geographically and culturally diverse regions within the framework of the nation is derived from representations of these regions and their associated regional characteristics in the movies, television and books.' (Author's abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- Dhuuluu-Yala : To Talk Straight : Publishing Indigenous Literature 2003 multi chapter work criticism
- Concepts of 'The West' in Canadian and Australian Literary Studies 1984 single work criticism
- North of the Ten Commandments : A Collection of Northern Territory Literature 1991 anthology poetry short story prose correspondence extract
- The Literature Board : A Brief History 1988 single work non-fiction
- The Struggles of the Little Magazines 2003 single work criticism
- A Press in Isolation : University of Western Australia Press, 1935-2004 2005 anthology criticism essay
- The Decline of the Literary Paradigm in Australian Publishing 2005 single work criticism
- Diagnosing the Death of Literature 2007 single work criticism
- Being a Queenslander : A Form of Literary and Geographical Conceit 1976 single work criticism
- Western Australia,