New Icon Identifies Peer Reviewed Journals
AustLit users may have noticed a new icon appearing on work records for periodicals. The 'peer reviewed' icon – – indicates that articles in the journal are evaluated prior to publication by specialist colleagues in the periodical's field. This icon will be added progressively to the relevant AustLit periodical records as new issues are indexed. For examples, see JASAL and Australian Humanities Review. (The latter also displays the arrowed-globe icon – – indicating a resource accessible via the World Wide Web.)

AustLit Research Uncovers Early Hewett Poem
AustLit research at the University of Western Australia has uncovered what is likely to be the first published poem by Dorothy Hewett, written when she was nine years old. 'Dreaming' explores the nature of dreams and reality, and is surprisingly sophisticated for a girl of her age. The poem is included in the 1938 anthology, Brave Young Singers: An Anthology of Child Verse Compiled from the Work of the Correspondence Classes of Western Australia.

'Dreaming' resulted from a State Government Schools correspondence program for pupils in country and remote areas of Western Australia. The program ran from 1928 until 1936 and was designed to teach verse composition and to develop an appreciation of poetry. Instruction followed from a method of illustrated 'Pattern Poetry', and pupils who showed promise received special attention.

Hewett, who was living in the wheat belt town of Wickepin when she wrote the poem, went on to become one of Australia's outstanding literary talents, producing a vast body of work. (For a time, Wickepin was also the home of Albert Facey, author of A Fortunate Life.)

New AustLit Records - and a Record for AustLit
During April and May 2006, the Content Development Team added:

• 7,110 new works
• 1,582 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, over 11,529 existing work and agent records have been upgraded and enhanced.

These figures show a marked increase on AustLit's usual bi-monthly statistics. The sharp rise is largely due to additional staff working on The Bibliography of Australian Literature project and other special projects. An update on these endeavours will be provided in the Newsletter later in 2006.

Another item of interest for the statistically-minded is that the 500,000th work record was entered onto AustLit during March. There are also over 85,000 records for agents (individuals and organisations) on AustLit and, given current trends, the 100,000 mark should be reached before the end of 2007.

Changes Afoot at Publishing Houses
Two of Australia's smaller publishing houses will change focus in 2007. The feminist publisher, Spinifex Press, will stop publishing new books altogether and Pandanus Books, based at the Australian National University, will end its fiction and poetry publishing.

Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne, founding publishers at Spinifex, cite five factors in the demise of feminist publishing – postmodernism, technological change, the establishment of bookselling superstores, globalisation and a change in emphasis in university courses. On the last of these factors, the publishers say: 'where once there were thriving, radical women's studies programs whose reading lists would include the latest feminist critiques, these have moved to the amorphous gender studies area.' (Australian, 22 March 2006) One of the feminist press's final publications is Hawthorne's poetry collection, The Butterfly Effect, in which she explores the social and creative impacts of the love between lesbians. Looking ahead, Spinifex intends to maintain its current list and continue to promote its books and authors in Australia and overseas.

At Pandanus Books the impetus for change resulted from several years of financial losses despite salary subsidies from the Australian National University. In June this year head of publishing, Ian Templeman, will retire, but other Pandanus staff will remain. Recent titles from Pandanus include Adrian Caesar's High Wire and Ann McCulloch's Dance of the Nomad: A Study of the Selected Notebooks of A.D. Hope. From 2007 the small press will concentrate solely on electronic versions of academic works.

Coetzee Pledges Loyalty to Australia
Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee formally adopted Australia as his country of allegiance at a one-person citizenship ceremony conducted by Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, during the 2006 Adelaide Writers' Week. Coetzee settled in Adelaide in 2002 with his partner, Professor Dorothy Driver, having been attracted to the city on previous visits. Speaking about his decision to take up citizenship, Coetzee said: 'I didn't so much leave South Africa – a country with which I retain strong emotional ties – as come to Australia ... I was attracted by the free and generous spirit of the people, by the beauty of the land itself and – when I first saw Adelaide – by the grace of the city.' (Age, 7 March 2006)

While Coetzee continues his own writing career in Australia he has also given generous support to the local literary scene. He is a member of the Adelaide Writers' Week committee, an honorary research fellow at the University of Adelaide (where he mentors creative writing students) and a member of the editorial advisory board of the new South Australian journal, Wet Ink.

Ten Australian Titles Among 1,001 'Must Reads'
Ten Australian novels are included in the newest version of a literary canon. 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, published in Australia by ABC Books, is based largely on the choices of British academics, a reasonable proportion of whom are associated with the University of Sussex. General Editor Peter Boxall says the book tells 'the story of the novel' – a literary form given a broad definition for the purposes of the anthology.

The choices have inevitably given rise to grievances about excluded books. In his exasperated review in the Spectator (25 February 2006), English novelist and critic Philip Hensher highlights the 'surprising gaps' in the Australian selections: 'no Henry Handel Richardson, no Marcus Clarke, no Miles Franklin.' Christopher Bantick (Sunday Tasmanian, 12 March 2006) notes that the Australian choices are all male and that the exclusion of Tim Winton 'is hard to justify'. Jennifer Byrne, who wrote the preface to the Australian edition, may have anticipated this kind of response. After listing some of the books included she says: '... can't argue with that. Except that people will and should. Isn't that the joy of a list? ... this is a tome to kick off rather than close debate...'

Perhaps part of that debate will be the definition of 'Australian' writers and writing. Some reviewers have identified four Australian authors; another lists only three. For AustLit's purposes the 'Australian' inclusions comprise the following:

• The Middle Parts of Fortune : Somme and Ancre, 1916 (Her Privates We) by the Sydney-born and educated Frederic Manning
• The Living and the Dead and Voss by Patrick White
• A Town Like Alice by Englishman Nevil Shute. (Shute's visit to Australia in the late 1940s provided the inspiration for A Town Like Alice. He returned a decade later and, continuing to write, spent the last ten years of his life on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula.)
• Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
• Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs by expatriate Peter Carey
• Under the Skin by Australian-raised Michel Faber,
  and
• Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man by J. M. Coetzee, both published since Coetzee settled in Australia.

Coming Soon to a Door Near You
During April 2006 the work of six poets will be presented on toilet doors in cinemas and airports in five Australian states. Advertised under the banner 'illustrated poems to keep you occupied while you're otherwise engaged', the poems are part of a project developed by the Red Room Company. Red Room's artistic director, Johanna Featherstone, says the project will give an 'amusing, larrikin slant' to the craft of writing and will promote poetry to a wider audience. (Sun-Herald, 26 March 2006) The poems will replace normal advertising in Qantas domestic terminals and in some Village and Greater Union cinemas. Specific locations can be found on Red Room's website.

US Market Embraces Zusak
Markus Zusak is well on the way to establishing a foothold in the North American book market. Zusak's The Messenger was honoured earlier this year by the American Library Association (see AustLit's February/March 2006 Newsletter) and now The Book Thief has been featured on the American Broadcasting Company's breakfast programme, Good Morning America. Zusak's interview on the television show on 17 March resulted in an immediate spike in online book sales through Amazon. Ten days later The Book Thief was still Amazon's top-seller in its children's fiction category. Although Zusak's novel is not aimed at a young audience, he is probably nonetheless pleased to be outselling J. K. Rowling's latest Harry Potter offering and boxed-sets of C. S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles.

Nellie Melba Encore for Williamson
In June 2005 playwright David Williamson walked away from Australian theatre declaring that he was giving up the stress of theatrical life in favour of reclaiming his health. (See 'Williamson Says "Enough"' in AustLit's August/September 2005 Newsletter) His determination must have weakened. Williamson plays will soon be back on the boards in Sydney, New South Wales and Noosa Heads, Queensland, albeit on a small scale. Williamson's adaptation of Geoffrey Robertson's 'The Tyrannicide Brief' – telling the story of the 17th century court case against Charles I of England – is having one reading by the Sydney Theatre Company on 7 April. A second play, 'Strings under My Fingers' will premiere at the Noosa Longweekend arts festival in mid-June. 'Strings under My Fingers' deals with the life of internationally acclaimed Australian guitarist Karin Schaupp. It will have ten performances and is to be directed by Williamson.

Writers Developing Links with Asia
Eight Australian writers will take up Asialink Literature Residencies in 2006. Three of the writers, Barbara Brooks, Luke Beesley and Graeme Miles, will spend time in India. Children's and young adult authors Rosanne Hawke and Hoa Pham will go to Pakistan and Vietnam respectively. Jan Cornwall will be based in Indonesia where she will work on a novella, a volume of bi-lingual poems and a performance poetry collaboration. Victorian writer Patricia Sykes will travel to Malaysia to develop a libretto for a full-length opera and another Victorian, playwright Christie Nieman, will undertake research in Japan into 'Kaidan' (traditional Japanese horror and ghost stories).

Details of each of the recipients and further information on their projects are available on the Asialink website.

John Marsden's New School Venture Up and Running
Best-selling children's and young adult author John Marsden has opened a small independent school on his property in Melbourne's rural hinterland. Marsden has previously hosted writing camps and workshops on his Tye Estate, but has now decided to establish a permanent school on the site. In an interview with Christopher Bantick, (Age, 6 February 2006) Marsden expressed the hope that his students would interact with the Estate's bush environment and with each other while developing skills in self-reliance and participation. The popular writer confessed to a conservative educational approach. 'I want people to be good citizens of this country ... I want people who can live in this society in a positive and creative way and can contribute to it ... That's a very conservative agenda. I will try to bring that about by giving them an education that they can commit to with heart and mind and firstly, with heart.'

Marsden also hopes the school will be a joy-filled place. Articulating a sentiment that could equally have come from Ellie Linton, his teenaged heroine in the Tomorrow Series and The Ellie Chronicles, Marsden declared: 'To live in this world and not recognise how extraordinary and wonderful and amazing it is would be a sad thing.'

Gem of a Tale Captured on Screen
Ben Rice's Pobby and Dingan has made a successful transition to the screen if audience reaction is anything to go by. A crowd of 1,000 people, mainly children, viewed the book's film version, 'Opal Dream', at the Berlin Children's Film Festival in February and responded with 'whistles, stamping of feet and roars of approval...' (Sydney Morning Herald, 13 February 2006). Rice adapted his children's novel with fellow-Brit, scriptwriter Peter Cattaneo. The film is due for release in Australia in mid-2006.

But Wait, There's More...
AustLit's February/March 2006 Newsletter canvassed a range of literary festivals taking place in capital cities across Australia this year ('Writers' Festivals Offer a Smorgasbord of Literary Treats'). Omitted was mention of the northern-most capital, Darwin. 'Wordstorm', the Northern Territory's fourth Writers' Festival, will be held from 18-21 May. Its focus is 'the Indigenous, Indonesian and East Timorese literature of the region, while also celebrating the rich and diverse literary traditions of non-Indigenous Australians.' Further information will soon be available on the NT Writers' Centre website.

On the writing of history and historical fiction:

• Joan Lindsay's disclaimer in Picnic at Hanging Rock: 'Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in the book are long since dead, it hardly seems important.'



• George Parsons reviewing Thomas Keneally's The Commonwealth of Thieves: 'If every Australian read Keneally we would be far better acquainted with that other country called the past.' (AQ : Australian Quarterly, vol.78 no.1 January-February 2006)



• Kate Grenville (author of The Secret River) quoted by Murray Waldren: My job 'is to put flesh on history's skeleton; the historian's, which is equally valuable, is to burrow into the relics and archives and tease out some sense of reality of meaning from them.' (Australian, 15 March 2006)



• Helen MacDonald (Postdoctoral Fellow at The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne): 'If readers cannot be certain about historians' versions of the past, what makes books by professional historians different from those by novelists?' (Australian, 25 March 2006)



• Mark McKenna (historian and author of Looking for Blackfellas Point): 'That's the crucial difference; history relies on distance, fiction tries constantly to break that distance down...' ('Writing the Past : History, Literature & the Public Sphere in Australia', December 2005)

For a development of these ideas see This Month's Spotlight.

Secret River Wins Top Commonwealth Prize
Kate Grenville's The Secret River is the winner of the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Grenville's historical novel had already won the South East Asia and Pacific Region section of the Prize and was pitched against Zadie Smith's On Beauty (Eurasia), Lisa Moore's Alligator (Caribbean and Canada) and Benjamin Kwakye's The Sun by Night (Africa) for the major award. Chair of the judging panel, Emeritus Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe, commented that '[t]he judges ... were intrigued by the outstanding quality of the works of fiction facing them ... We noted that, in particular, the Prize continues to reward new talents in English language fiction.' (State Library of Victoria website).

Grenville received her award from Prince Edward at the State Library of Victoria on 14 March. She will travel to the UK in May to attend a reception with Queen Elizabeth II. Grenville, an avowed republican, told the Age's Jason Steger (18 March 2006) that she would be delighted to meet Her Royal Highness as 'the Queen of England'.

Grenville's novel has also added to its swag of awards by jointly claiming the 2005 Fellowship of Australian Writers' Christina Stead Award for fiction. The Award was announced at a ceremony at Deakin University on 31 March 2006. Grenville shares the prize with Alex Skovron for The Poet.

Sixty Lights Continues to Scoop Prize Pools
Gail Jones has mirrored her earlier success at the Western Australian (WA) literary awards by winning both the Fiction and Overall prizes at the 2006 Festival Awards for Literature in South Australia. (In WA, Jones won the Fiction award and the overall Premier's Prize.) Jones's Sixty Lights was chosen from a field of 563 entries. South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, described the field as 'the most competitive literary field in Australia' and declared that Jones's win 'confirms her growing reputation as one of the best authors writing in Australia today.' (Arts SA website)

Other winners in the Festival Awards include South Australian authors Christine Harris and Mike Ladd, who each received writing fellowships, and Mandy Sayer who won the non-fiction award for her autobiography Velocity. A full list of winners is available on the Arts SA website.

Hartnett and Ormerod Selected for IBBY Honours
Australia's selections for the 2006 International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Honours List are The Silver Donkey by Sonya Hartnett and Lizzie Nonsense by Jan Ormerod. John Foster, President of IBBY's Australian section, said that Hartnett's book was chosen for its 'sensitively-drawn characters, evocation of the atmosphere of World War I France and clever use of stories-within-a-story.' Ormerod's picture book was selected because of 'the warmth of the illustrations, the depiction of the family relationship and the beautifully executed presentation of the Australian bush.' (InCite, January-February 2006)

Books selected for the biennial IBBY List must be representative of the best in children's literature from the nominating country and need to be suitable for publication throughout the world. IBBY uses the List as a means of encouraging international understanding. Honour List diplomas will be presented at IBBY's Congress in Beijing on 21 September 2006. Following the Congress, seven parallel sets of the chosen books will travel the world for display at conferences and book fairs. Five permanent collections of titles in the IBBY Honour List are kept at sites in Germany, Switzerland, Slovakia, Japan and the USA.

Biography that Morphed into Autobiography Wins National Prize
Sydney school teacher John Hughes began writing about the life of his Ukrainian grandfather, but finished by telling his own story in The Idea of Home. Hughes's book of autobiographical essays, already the winner of the Douglas Stewart Prize in the New South Wales Premier's Awards, has now garnered the National Award for Biography. Hughes told the Sydney Morning Herald's Angela Bennie (30 March 2006) that the European stories of escape and hardship told to him by his grandfather had become 'the foundation of his imaginative life, of his sense of self and home.' Hughes explained that his collection of five essays began as 'my attempt to explore things I had observed with my parents and my grandparents ... I thought I was writing about my grandfather, and my family. I have discovered to my surprise that I have written about myself.'

Scholarly Award to Kinnane's Shadow Lines
Stephen Kinnane is joint winner of the recently announced 2004 Stanner Award for his portrayal of his grandparents' lives in Shadow Lines. The biography tells the 1920s story of his Aboriginal grandmother and her English husband in Western Australia. The Award readers commended the book for 'its readability, audience appeal and ability to evoke character and situation in powerful fashion ... It is one thing to do the time-consuming and often painful research necessary to underpin and contextualise such a narrative, but to bring it vividly to life takes a strong literary and imaginative bent, and this is something Kinnane certainly possesses.' (AIATSIS website)

Presented annually by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), the Stanner Award honours the late anthropologist and AIATSIS founder, Emeritus Professor W. E. H. Stanner. It is given to 'the best scholarly published contribution to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Studies that reflects the dynamic nature of Professor Stanner's life and work.' Joint winner with Kinnane of the 2006 Award is Ian Keen for Aboriginal Economy and Society: Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation. Referring to all the shortlisted works for this year's Award, AIATSIS Chairman, Mick Dodson, said that the books 'serve to chisel Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people deeper into the Australian historical landscape. Like the shell middens of Indigenous Australia, they tell stories that will inform and stimulate the minds of generations to come.'

Young Adult Writers Take Major Aurealis Prizes
Two writers of young adult fiction are the winners of the recently announced major prizes in the 2005 Aurealis Awards for Speculative Fiction Writing in Australia. Isobelle Carmody's Alyzon Whitestarr won the Golden Aurealis Novel award while Garth Nix's Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case took the Golden Aurealis for Short Story. Both books also won their respective sections in the Young Adult Division. Nix claimed an additional prize in the Children's Long Fiction Division with a win for the third book in his Keys to the Kingdom series, Drowned Wednesday.

A full list of the 2005 winners, along with judges' reports for each division, can be found on the Aurealis Awards website.

Struggling Writer Claims Inaugural ABC Fiction Award
Twenty-seven year old Brisbane writer, William Elliott, is the winner of the inaugural ABC Fiction Award. Commenting on Elliott's manuscript, 'The Pilo Family Circus', one of the Award judges, Delia Falconer, said that the characters 'are bizarre and disturbing, his scenarios at times darkly funny.' (ABC Fiction Award website) Elliott has spent the last four years producing five manuscripts and was on the verge of abandoning his writing career when he learned he was the winner of the ABC Award. Elliott will now receive a $10,000 advance and have his book published through ABC Books. 'The Pilo Family Circus' will also be broadcast nationwide on ABC Local Radio and made available as an audio book.

Under-Achieving Hero Guides Murphy to Peace Prize
Kirsten Murphy's under-achieving Joe King, the lead character in her novel, The King of Whatever, has helped her to a win in the 2005 Children's Peace Literature Award. The Award is offered biennially by Psychologists for Peace (PFP) 'to recognise authors who promote the peaceful resolution of conflict through their work.' In her acceptance speech, Murphy said 'I wrote this novel for a few reasons. One reason was that I was inspired by the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote that appears in the front of the book: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are little matters compared to what lies within us." I wanted to communicate to a young adult audience the idea that ordinary is OK. We will not all be rock stars or famous sports people or geniuses at the age of seventeen; most of us will lead a relatively ordinary existence, but one we can be proud of. For, it's the people we are and the relationships that we have with others that matter'.

The full text of Murphy's speech can be read on the PFP website.

Miles Franklin Longlist
Continuing an approach begun in 2005, a longlist has been announced in the lead up to this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award. The list of twelve books (chosen from the fifty-four submitted) include four historical novels and five that feature Melbourne as a setting. The historical novels are:

• Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
• The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald
• The Secret River by Kate Grenville
• The Wing of the Night by Brenda Walker

The novels set, at least in part, in Melbourne and environs are:

• Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
• Prochownik's Dream by Alex Miller
• Sunnyside by Joanna Murray-Smith
• The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
• The Garden Book by Brian Castro

The remaining three longlisted books are A Case of Knives by Melburnian Peter Rose; An Accidental Terrorist, a thriller set on the south coast of New South Wales, by Queensland resident Steven Lang; and the Adelaide-centred Knitting by South Australian Anne Bartlett.

The longlist includes three first time novelists – Carrie Tiffany, Anne Bartlett and poet Peter Rose. Alex Miller is in contention to become the fourth writer to win the Miles Franklin on three occasions. Those who have already achieved this feat are: David Ireland, Peter Carey and Tim Winton. Thea Astley holds the record for most wins with a total of four.

The shortlist for the Miles Franklin will be announced on 27 April and the winner on 22 June.

Ditmar Nominations for Australian Speculative Fiction
Scott Westerfeld could be forgiven for being optimistic about his chances in the Novel category of this year's Ditmar Awards – he has three nominations in a field of six. Westerfeld is in the ballot for Touching Darkness, Peeps and Uglies. Other nominees are Justine Larbalestier for Magic or Madness, Garth Nix for Drowned Wednesday and Sean Williams and Shane Dix for Ascent.

The complete ballot for all Ditmar categories is available on Conjure's website. Registered members of Conjure, the 45th Australian National Science Fiction Convention, have until 11 April to register their votes. Winners will be announced at the Conjure Convention in Brisbane on 15 April.

Australians on Orange Prize Longlist
Three Australians have been selected for the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction longlist. They are:

• Carrie Tiffany for Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living
• Gail Jones for Dreams of Speaking
• Celestine Hitiura Vaite for Frangipani

The Orange Prize is awarded to 'the woman who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English.' To be eligible the novel must have been published 'for the first time in the United Kingdom between 1 April of the year before the prize is awarded and 31 March of the year in which the prize is awarded.' The Prize has been offered since 1996 and has been won once by an Australian – Kate Grenville in 2001 for The Idea of Perfection.

The shortlist for the Orange Prize will be announced on 26 April and the winner on 6 June. The complete longlist can be viewed on the Orange Prize website.

Move Over History Wars – the Novelists are on Their Way
On 1 December 2005 Mark McKenna, award-winning historian and author, delivered a public lecture at Griffith University in Brisbane. The lecture, 'Writing the Past : History, Literature & the Public Sphere in Australia', was sponsored by the Humanities Writing Project and addressed issues surrounding the relationship between historians, novelists, the reading public, the media and the political process. The lecture was published for a wider audience two weeks later in the Australian Financial Review. In March 2006, the ideas articulated by McKenna were given further attention by Stella Clarke in 'Havoc in History House' (Weekend Australian, 4-5 March 2006). A period of debate ensued.

At the outset of his paper, McKenna posited his views on the idea that the Australian public has recently lost faith in historians as authentic storytellers, in part as a result of the so-called history wars. 'A cultural space has opened up into which writers of fiction are now more commonly seen as the most trustworthy purveyors of the past.' Additionally, 'certain novelists are now courted in the media as historical authorities and willingly play the historian ... The rise of the novelist as historian, of fiction as history, has accompanied the decline of critical history in the public domain.'

McKenna's suspicion is that Australia has replaced critical history with a 'historical mythology' that can be shaped to serve a variety of cultural and political purposes. Central to his argument is the engagement of the media with Kate Grenville following the publication of The Secret River. McKenna contends that Grenville positioned herself as a 'history warrior ... demanding that the nation come to grips with her rendering of frontier history.' It is true that, in a range of interviews and articles published in Australia and overseas, Grenville was (and continues to be) quizzed about the historical underpinnings of her novel. She was quoted in the Scotsman (4 February 2006) as saying, 'I felt an urgent need to write this book. When you're suddenly aware that your whole culture has lived with a secret place that it hasn't investigated, it's like a Pandora's box. The urge to open it, no matter what the consequences, becomes very great.' Grenville, however, seems to imply a differing role for herself than that of the historian. She wrote in the Australian (13 August 2005) that she 'wanted to put flesh on the bones of history' and make her research 'come to life'. In the same article she says The Secret River 'isn't history but it's based solidly on history: just about everything in the book really happened and much of the dialogue is what people really said or wrote.' Statements like these did nothing to allay McKenna's fears. In fact, it led to him to believe that '[i]f ever there was a case of a novelist wanting her work to be taken seriously as history, it is Grenville, I think.'

McKenna's thesis, using a phrase borrowed from Inga Clendinnen, is that historians enter into a 'moral relationship' with the people represented in historical documents. They do not have the liberty of imagination exercised by novelists such as Grenville. (When Grenville's historical trail frustratingly ran cold she said, in the previously quoted Australian column, that 'it stopped mattering because the real man, my ancestor, faded from view and was replaced by another man. He was a fictional construction...') As McKenna says '[t]he novelist is not responsible to historical sources. Fiction's truth is the truth of the human heart and the human condition' whereas the historian's truth 'is the chance to understand human experience as we can never live it; from above, from afar, looking back, understanding because we are not there ... That's the crucial difference.'

In her rebuttal of McKenna's position, 'Havoc in History House', Stella Clarke argues that the reading public 'can tell the difference between imaginative interpreters and the service rendered by workers at the coalface...' and that, as a nation coming to grips with its past, 'we need what help we can get.' She writes that Australian history was 'lived, made and messed up by people like us, and our best literary artists can do an excellent job of reminding us of this...' Clarke owns that she has previously praised not only Grenville's historical fiction, but also that of Roger McDonald, Peter Carey and Thomas Keneally. She restates Keneally's gentle reminder that '[a]cademic historians are a recent invention, while literary and dramatic artists have been around forever, educating us in the nature and continuity of aspects of human experience. Historians ... are his heroes but, frankly, "history is too rich to be left in their hands".'

Finding a middle ground in the debate is Helen MacDonald, a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, and the author of Human Remains : Episodes in Human Dissection (2005). MacDonald's research includes the period covered by James Bradley's The Resurrectionist (see New Publications). Her contention ('Novel Views of History', Weekend Australian, 25-26 March 2006) is that 'histories and historical novels are not as distinct as they have come to be seen. For a start, historians and novelists are each other's readers. Both are curious about the past and work artfully to re-create it for readers.' In that re-creation, however, academic historians 'can rarely allow themselves to focus on character.' Where novelists can invent, historians cannot. MacDonald does, however, question the degree of the fiction writer's invention. She is disconcerted by the 'imaginative use' Bradley makes of real people and by his 'simplification of things that were dense with meaning at the time.' MacDonald's conclusion is that each kind of research 'is fitting for its genre. Documentary research is the historian's badge of honour. For historical novelists, that badge ultimately lies in telling a compelling tale that gives readers a sense they were there.'

Perhaps the last words should go to McKenna, whose ideas sparked this discussion. 'Literary history', he says, 'leaves a space, a window through which the reader has the capacity to wonder and to imagine and discover this past for themselves.' To extend McKenna's thought it may be that, whether the written words are those of a historical novelist or a literary historian, it is conceivably the reader who has the ultimate responsibility and opportunity to discern a truth.

The full text of McKenna's lecture can be read on the Humanities Writing Project website.

The Resurrectionist – Novel
James Bradley must have wondered at times if his new novel, The Resurrectionist, had the same chance of seeing the light of day as the deceased Londoners depicted in the book. Originally scheduled for release by Scribe in 2002, The Resurrectionist has at last been released in Australia by Picador and will be published in the United Kingdom by Faber & Faber in 2007. Explaining the delay, Bradley told Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Catherine Keenan that he 'missed a lot of deadlines'. (4 March 2006) Bradley said he found the book difficult to write both 'personally' and technically'.

His main character, the orphaned Gabriel Swift, is initially a student of an anatomist in 1820s London. As the novel unfolds Gabriel is drawn into an underworld of violence, addiction and corruption. 'It kind of involved me getting close to stuff which I think is in most people, but which you don't particularly want to get close to', reflected Bradley. 'I think to do a book properly, you have to go right into it. You've got to do it with a kind of intensity in order to make it work. And this one does end up in some very bad places.'

Bradley discusses the writing of The Resurrectionist in an interview on Pan Macmillan/Picador's website.

Left Bank Waltz: The Australian Bookshop in Paris – Autobiography
In 1996 Elaine Lewis opened the first Australian bookshop in Paris, in the heart of the St Germain des Prés literary quarter. Despite careful planning, it proved to be a short-lived venture. The French government enforces strict rules in relation to foreign businesses and the shop was closed by the Chamber of Commerce in 1998 for failing to turn a profit during its first year of operation. (This was despite the fact that the Chamber had accepted a 1995 business plan indicating that a profit could not be made in under three years.) During its short life, the bookstore hosted a range of literary events and welcomed travelling Australian authors. Nikki Gemmell, Gail Jones, Mandy Sayer, Nick Earls and Fiona Capp were among those who happily crossed the store's threshold.

In Left Bank Waltz, Lewis tells the story of the inspiration behind opening 'The Australian Bookshop' and the literary life it sustained.

All the Time in the World and blue grass – Poetry
Two new poetry collections by Australian writers are being offered by Salt Publishing. Dennis Haskell, poet, academic and critic (and AustLit Advisory Board member), has published All the Time in the World, his first collection in nearly a decade. Salt describes the poems as being about 'love, the nature of truth, individual identity and contemporary issues such as the Iraq war...' The other collection is Peter Minter's blue grass. Minter's poems are '[a]rranged across four parts with an interwoven series of innovative sonnets ... their sensual intelligence concentrated on extraordinarily everyday emotional, political and ecological landscapes.'

Full descriptions of both collections can be read on Salt's website.

Other Recent Releases

• Peter Carey's tale of fraud in the art world, Theft : A Love Story
• M. J. Hyland's Carry Me Down, a novel tapping into the author's Irish heritage
• Ursula Dubosarsky's novel for young adults, The Red Shoe, set in Sydney at the time of the Petrov Affair
• A Press in Isolation : University of Western Australia Press, 1935-2004, a collection of essays and recollections on the Press's first seventy years
  and
• Michael Wilding's Wild Amazement, a fictional memoir that takes in the 1970s-1980s era shared by Wilding with Frank Moorhouse and Robert Adamson

Melbourne Prize
Victorian writers have the opportunity to enter the 2006 Melbourne Prize. Offered by the Melbourne Prize Trust, the award is divided into three categories: a $60,000 Melbourne Prize for Literature, a $30,000 Best Writing Award and $3,000 Civic Choice Award. The Prize for Literature will be awarded to 'a Victorian based writer (no age limit) whose lifetime body of published or produced work i.e. poetry, plays, fiction, non-fiction or essays has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and cultural and intellectual life.' The Best Writing Award will recognise work 'by a Victorian writer under 40, which is an outstanding example of clarity, originality and creativity.' The Civic Choice Award will be determined by members of the public.

Detailed information on the prize and conditions of entry will be available on the Trust's website from 1 May 2006. Entries will open on 15 May and close on 14 July. The winners will be announced on 15 November.

Calibre Prize
Australian Book Review (ABR) and Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) have established an annual prize for outstanding essay writing. ABR believes the $10,000 first prize makes the award one of the most lucrative essay prizes in the world. The Calibre Prize is open to Australian residents or Australian citizens living overseas. Essays must be between 3,000 and 10,000 words and all non-fiction subjects are eligible. Entries for the inaugural prize close on 31 July 2006. Guidelines and application details are available on ABR's website.

Michael Dugan (1947-2006)
Michael Dugan, author of hundreds of books ranging from novels and plays to picture books and educational titles, has died at the age of fifty-eight. Dugan concluded his education at Wesley College in Melbourne, but left school in 1965 with no firm plans for his future. According to Jeff Prentice (Dromkeen Society Bulletin, vol.11 no.1, December 2005) Dugan took various jobs including fruit-picking and pot-hole digging before finding employment in several Melbourne bookshops. At Oldmeadow Booksellers, West Heidelberg, Dugan 'specialised in fiction for children and school library supplies.' He later edited poetry magazines and anthologies as well as developing his own writing. Prentice notes further that Dugan had associations 'with Overland, the Fellowship of Australian Writers, The Australian Society of Authors, the Children's Book Council of Australia (Victorian Branch) and Dromkeen.'

Shortly before his death Dugan was awarded the biennial Pheme Tanner Award for outstanding personal contribution to children's literature. The citation recorded Dugan's 'immense contribution to children's literature by presenting non-fiction and information in a vibrant, accurate and natural way.' It also noted that Dugan 'never underestimate[d] the capacity of his readers to discern and to judge events, situations, issues and characters critically. His many series of books, especially in history and social studies, have informed decades of young Australian readers.' (La Trobe University website)

Dugan's last publications were the six books in the Macmillan educational series, Australians at War (2000), spanning the period from colonial military engagements through to the Vietnam War. Others of his children's books include the picture books Dragon's Breath and Wombats Can't Fly and the fictional stories Dingo Boy and Melissa's Ghost.

Bill Scott (1923-2005)
Queenslander Bill Scott, author of the popular Complete Book of Australian Folk Lore, has died in his much-loved home state in the town of Warwick. John Collins, former managing director of Jacaranda Wiley for whom Scott worked, began his obituary for Scott in this way: 'In his last letter, Bill Scott described himself as a "bloody old hermit squatting grimly in his study like an old whelk on a mudbank".' Collins declares '[h]e was nothing of the kind' and proceeds to enumerate the wealth of personas encompassed by Scott, many of which took him to the heart of Australian community life. (Courier-Mail, 28 February 2006) Those personas included songwriter, poet, folklorist, historian, bush band member and performer at folk festivals.

Raised in the Queensland bush, Scott left school at the age of fourteen and worked at labouring jobs before four years of naval service during World War II. His early poems were published in the Bulletin soon after the end of the war and his poetry continued to appear in a range of journals for the next fifty years. Their subject matter often reflected Scott's love of Queensland and the importance he placed on the spiritual life. In his poem, 'North Queensland', Scott marvels at the landscapes of Australia's far north where a 'name's enough to bring the daydream and the secret smile'. The poem ends:
Let my body die where it will; my spirit's gone
north with the high far flight of wintering egrets
white in the sunlight, north of Capricorn.

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