The Teaching Aust Lit Website Is Go!

The website for the Teaching Aust Lit (TAL) project has been launched and is now available at http://teaching.austlit.edu.au/; you can also get there from the AustLit home page.

The Teaching Aust Lit site will evolve over the coming months to become an essential tool for teachers of Australian literature texts.

The TAL site contains:

• an online forum for discussing ideas and issues around your experience of teaching Australian texts – all teachers or those with an opinion are welcome to join the forum
• a regular blog by the project leaders – Dr Philip Mead, Dr Alice Healy and Kerry Kilner
• information about the project and our plans.

The TAL site will soon contain:

• the results of a survey of current and recent past experiences of teaching Australian texts at upper secondary and tertiary levels in Australia and information on the international experience of teaching Australian texts
• information on what is being taught, in what context, and the tools and techniques being used
• information on available resources to assist teachers including AustLit full text and data.

The Teaching Aust Lit project has been funded by the Australian Teaching and Learning Council and is supported by AustLit. For specific further information contact the TAL project officer, Anna Gray: anna.gray@utas.edu.au

Writing the Tropical North
Dr Cheryl Taylor, Associate Professor at James Cook University, Townsville, is co-ordinating AustLit's newest research community, Writing the Tropical North. This new subset came into being as AustLit's Writers of Tropical Queensland research team began opening up the comparatively unexplored literature associated with the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia as areas of specific AustLit research focus.

Cheryl writes:

We're thrilled to announce the opening in AustLit of Writing the Tropical North as a new subset that includes Writers of Tropical Queensland, Northern Territory Literature and Northern Western Australian Literature.

The broadened coverage of northern Australian literature is an exciting development. The Writers of Tropical Queensland team at James Cook University is primarily responsible for extending the subset westwards. Research, writing and indexing for Northern Territory Literature is currently the responsibility mainly of Dr Jane Frugtneit. Visits to Darwin by Kerry Kilner and Carol Hetherington prepared the way for extending the subsets through contacts they made with Northern Territory librarians. Jane is working with literature held in the Northern Territory Collection that was begun by Michael Loos in 1972, and is now the largest repository of material relating to the Northern Territory in the world. We are grateful for help with listings given by Territory (Government) librarian, John Richards, and are planning further visits to Darwin.

The team expects to discover many features that in general distinguish the literature of the Australian Tropics from works produced in more temperate southern zones as they record information by and about authors who were born in, lived in, visited or wrote about Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Additional content for the Black Words subset will also be generated through this new research.

Further News from the Far North
Another James Cook University AustLit researcher, Gillian Barrett, spent a week in June working in the AustLit office at The University of Queensland. Here she took over 4,000 photographs of stories and poems in the University's hard copy of Australian Woman's Mirror (AWM), preparatory to carrying out further research and to transferring this data into AustLit. The AWM is a neglected but rich repository for popular Australian writing of the early twentieth century.

More Greek Language Writing Added to Multicultural Writers Subset
Dr Michael Jacklin, AustLit researcher based at the University of Wollongong, reports on recent additions to the Australian Multicultural Writers subset:

Additions to the Multicultural subset include the indexing by Pipina Elles of recent issues of the Greek-language journals Antipodes and O Logos. Issue 20 of O Logos (2007) is dedicated to the Greek-Australian poet Katina Baloukas and includes both critical and creative works. Among its many contributors are Ioanna Liakakos, Litsa Gogas, Dina Amanatides, Erma Vassiliou, Koula Teo and Stathis Raftopoulos. Issue 53 of Antipodes (2007) is in honour of Greek-Australian writer Chris Fifis and features poetry by Fifis and works by Nikos Nomikos, Giannes Liaskos, Yota Krili-Kevans and others. Also worth noting is that both O Logos and occasionally Antipodes carry works in English. For example, Antipodes issue 52 (2006) includes poetry in English by Antigone Kefala and Aristides Paradissis.

AustLit at ASAL
This year's Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference witnessed a strong presence of people associated with AustLit. As ASAL is the peak body for Australian literature researchers and teachers, it was not surprising that AustLit team members, Advisory Board members and our end users were out in force.

• Dr Philip Mead, Kerry Kilner and Dr Alice Healy led a forum on Teaching Australian Literature that announced and discussed a new Australian Learning and Teaching Council (formerly the Carrick Institute) funded project
• The AustLit management team of Kerry Kilner and Carol Hetherington presented papers as did team members Dr Jane Frugtneit, Linda Hale and Dr Roger Osborne
• The recently completed 'Banned in Australia' subset was launched with Associate Professor Ken Stewart's amusing and perceptive address at a lunchtime session and papers were given by Dr Nicole Moore and Dr Marita Bullock describing the research methods used in compiling the subset and analysing the data it contains
• Several members of AustLit's Advisory Board presented papers or were involved in panels and launches – Professors Bruce Bennett, Robert Dixon, Dennis Haskell, Paul Eggert, Richard Fotheringham and Elizabeth Webby, and Dr Leigh Dale

and

• Elizabeth Hodgson and Ernie Blackmore, both working with Black Words at the University of Wollongong, read at the Guest Writers session

Kerry Kilner's paper, 'Data or Detail', explored the ways that AustLit data might be used to map and graph literary history as told through the data store that AustLit provides. She discussed, in particular, the further work that needs to be undertaken by the AustLit team to improve and enhance AustLit now that the mass data-gathering effort resulting in The Bibliography of Australian Literature is complete. Focusing on an analysis of the gender of AustLit agents, Kerry discussed the value of undertaking macro-level analysis of the full AustLit dataset because of the way it revealed gaps and problems in the foundational data. There is a major review of AustLit data currently underway with a number of automated and manual data cleaning projects planned for the near future. Empirical research methods have a great deal to offer contemporary researchers when analysing large quantities of data; by undertaking this research ourselves AustLit will be able to ensure that the data is more reliable and of greater value to our community.

Another AustLit team member involved in the ASAL conference was Ralph Spaulding from the University of Tasmania. Ralph was one of the judges for the 2008 Mary Gilmore Award, along with Stephanie Green and panel chair C A Cranston.

Here Ralph explains the judging process and reflects on his role:

The task began last August and continued for nine months. It was exciting work. For some months, I received parcels of poetry books – in the end a total of 38 texts. Firstly, I read each text in one sitting to gain a sense of the writer's ideas and voice. At this stage my responses varied considerably and the impact of some poets was immediate and unforgettable. Later I undertook a more intensive reading of the books and recorded notes about each poet's themes, diction and poetic form, sometimes copying particular poems I felt represented the poet's writing. I also considered how successfully each collection held together as a whole. This careful reading of the texts resulted in changes in my initial responses to the work of about eight poets. At the end of this process I had grouped all the poets into categories of 'very possible', 'possible' and 'not sure'.

Subsequently, my notes and copies of poems were useful points of reference in cases where the three judges had to share a single copy of some works. And my notes were invaluable when we began the process of short listing candidates for the prize. This process was an enriching critical exercise. We compiled our shortlists separately, in each case justifying a poet's inclusion, and then shared them. About six poets were common to all three lists, but the differences proved fertile ground for discussion and reconsideration. I remember chastising myself when returning to one writer's work that had not been on my original short-list and discovering much that I had missed. The interchange of critical opinion among the judges continued for several weeks and led to unanimous decisions about the short-listed writers and the winner, Nathan Shepherdson for his Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror.

I gained much from being involved in this process. I confirmed that poetry writing in Australia is flourishing and being supported by a number of publishers who take pride in publishing attractive and carefully edited books. Long may such support continue! I enjoyed reading poetry of great variety, ranging from sensitively crafted poems in traditional mode to highly experimental and innovative writing. And I now own a number of the texts entered for the award. Perhaps I should begin indexing their contents in the AustLit database!

See Recent Literary Awards and Shortlists for the result of the Mary Gilmore prize and the other awards announced at ASAL.

New AustLit Records
During June and July 2008, the Content Development Team added:

• 5,786 new works

and

• 1,231 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, over 10,200 existing work and agent records have been upgraded and enhanced.

Rolex Mentorship for Young Australian Writer
Tara June Winch, author of the award-winning collection Swallow the Air, has been named the literature protégé for the 2008-2009 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The initiative seeks 'outstanding emerging artists from around the world' in the fields of dance, film, literature, music, theatre and the visual arts. Protégés are paired with 'great masters in their field' for a one year collaboration aimed at 'sharing, learning and growing'.

Winch spent a week in Nigeria with the other literature finalists in May 2008. The group met with Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Prize-winning writer who will be the initiative's next mentor. Speaking of the experience, Winch reflected: 'It was amazing to be sitting around one of the great writers', spending time 'talking, sharing meals, drinking wine and just hanging out'. Now that she has been selected, Winch says 'I want to develop the more political aspects of my writing, be more vociferous with Indigenous issues and the value of Indigenous culture to the rest of the world'... My goal is to develop the tool I've chosen – writing – to become louder in what I say.' (Artery, Winter 2008)

Winch was nominated for the Rolex initiative by previous Australian winner Julia Leigh. Leigh told the Sydney Morning Herald's Erick Jensen: 'Writing is a profoundly "solo" experience, the best work is done alone, but from my own mentorship with Toni Morrison I can say that it is a comfort and a boon to be able to spend time with a master of the craft'.

Tara June Winch will move to either the US or Europe for the duration of her mentorship; she will work on a second draft of a novel that focuses on language and belonging.

Sales of Two Australian Novels Set to Skyrocket in the UK
In early June, talk show hosts Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan announced their 'Summer Read' shortlist; of the eight titles selected, two were by Australians – Tony Jordan's Addition and James Bradley's The Resurrectionist. Ciar Byrne, journalist with England's Independent newspaper, opened his column about the announcement in the following way: Since James Bradley's Gothic thriller The Resurrectionist was first published a year ago it has, to be kind, enjoyed modest sales ... [of] fewer than 300 copies. But that is apparently about to change ... unless he is very unlucky, Mr Bradley can now expect to be selling 250,000 copies.' (7 June 2008)

The general estimate of the effect of endorsement by the 'Richard and Judy's Summer Read' list is increased sales in the order of 3,000%. Last year, for instance, Kate Morton's The Shifting Fog (published in the UK under the title The House at Riverton) was a 'Summer Read' selection and it sold 650,000 copies.

An indication of sales can be gleaned from Amazon's fiction bestseller list. On 31 July 2008 seven of the eight titles from the 'Summer Read' list appeared in the top 100, with three of those in the top ten. The Resurrectionist was listed at #33 and Addition at #35. Interestingly, Morton's The House at Riverton was holding the number 15 spot, and her latest novel, The Forgotten Garden, was ranked at number one.

Black Words Celebrated at NAIDOC Week in New York
Anita Heiss, co-ordinator of AustLit's Black Words subset, travelled to the USA in July for NAIDOC Week 2008. Funded by the Copyright Agency Ltd and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Anita was part of a panel discussing the 'Diversity and Reality of Aboriginal Australia'.

Left to right: Karen Oughtred (advocate for Australian Aboriginal Theatre at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian), the Hon. John Olsen (Australian Consul-General in New York), Anita Heiss, David Bosun (Torres Strait Islander artist) and panel chair Roberto Borrero Photo courtesy of Anita Heiss

Anita writes:

I tried to make the point through my paper that as Aboriginal writers we are part of the same national Indigenous community, therefore the themes of our writing are often common ... But it is the way in which we write that varies greatly and demonstrates our diversity.

For example, we have the Aboriginal English voices of Ruby Langford Ginibi, Vivienne Cleven and Gayle Kennedy. We have the guerrilla poetry of Lionel Fogarty; we have the urban-based poetry of Samuel Wagan Watson and the performance poetry of Romaine Moreton. We have the work of Miles Franklin Award-winning author Alexis Wright who some believe pushed the literary boundaries in with her epic novel Carpentaria in 2007.

And while we are all writers with many similarities, the key one being that we can't survive financially as writers, we have a wealth of life experiences that vary greatly. Our lives are the culmination of a diverse range of experiences that make us no more or less Indigenous than the next person ... And our writers tell stories about metropolitan Brisbane, the women's movement, homophobia, the stolen generations, relationships, community politics and history, and all of them from diverse Indigenous perspectives.

I have no doubt that as a result of NAIDOC Week in New York that more people will look towards Aboriginal literature to learn more about who we are as a collective of diverse peoples in the 21st century.'

(from 'NAIDOC in New York Report', Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation website)

Anita's whirlwind life continues unabated with the recent launch of Avoiding Mr Right, the sequel to her 2007 novel Not Meeting Mr Right (2007).

A more detailed report on Anita's USA trip, together with other Black Words updates, is available in August/September's Black Words e-news.

Inaugural Crime Festival Takes Off
The first Crime and Justice Festival was held in Melbourne in July and met with sufficient success to ensure another event will be held in 2009. The festival brought together members of the literary and legal fraternities to 'celebrate and promote contemporary writings in the fields of justice and human rights, and to overlay these discussions with guest writers in the genre of crime fiction'.

Included on the program for the first festival were: a theatre performance of Ned Kelly's The Jerilderie Letter, conversations with Gabrielle Lord, Dorothy Porter, Barry Maitland and Michael Robotham, and a talk by Chloe Hooper on her recent publication The Tall Man.

Another festival guest, Peter Temple, told Age journalist Liz Porter that 'crime fiction readers have come out, they are admitting their secret addiction ... All sorts of people are now prepared to say: "I love crime fiction." What they are saying is, "I like a good story.".' While Garry Disher believes that crime novels 'feed a hunger for engagement with social issues' and appeal to our 'darker side', fellow crime writer Kerry Greenwood suggests the genre's popularity is 'a byproduct of a secure and comfortable society ... In the same way as children love stories about ogres, middle-class adults read crime fiction – especially the hard-edged stuff – to be safely scared.' (Age, 13 July 2008)

Moving Poetry
The April/May AustLit newsletter reported on a Melbourne-based project aimed at exposing the city's travelling public to the poetry of local writers. (See 'Rooku Bound along the Tracks' for further background). In a similar move, Canberra commuters can now read work by ACT poets while riding the city's bus network. ACT Chief Minister John Stanhope said the initiative was part of 'the ACT Government's commitment to give all Canberrans opportunities to engage with the arts, and to take the arts to the people where they work, live and play'. (Media release, 8 July 2008)

Six poems have been chosen for Poetry in ACTION; one each by Monica Carroll and Maggie Shapley and two poems apiece from Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers and Miranda Lello. The poems can all be viewed online on the ACT Government's Arts website.

Robert Dessaix, concluding his essay 'Beauty and the Ruins', on the decadence afflicting modern Western civilisations:
On the last page of virtually every book I've written – perhaps all of them – there is an attempt to say: there is beauty, if not always meaning, and, despite all the suffering, it is not doomed. In this, despite belonging to my era, and using its words and imagery, I like to think that I also thumb my nose at it in ways that have deep roots.

'There are candles still flickering in the darkness. Blinded by the artificial light of our times, we can easily fail to notice them. Memory, cultivation, rootedness, language, learning, reason and complexity are still there for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. For the artist, art is in itself a redemptive act, I believe – it buys back suffering and transfigures it. Perhaps that's why we do it.
(Age, 14 June 2008)

Carroll Wins Miles Franklin with Tale of Suburban Melbourne
The terms of the Miles Franklin Literary Award stipulate that entries 'must present Australian life in any of its phases'. The 2008 award judges were clearly convinced that in Steven Carroll's winning entry, The Time We Have Taken, they had found a book to satisfy Franklin's conditions.

Carroll's novel, published in 2007, is the third in a series that explores the individual lives of a family of three – parents Vic and Rita, and their son Michael. (The Time We Have Taken follows The Art of the Engine Driver (2002) and The Gift of Speed (2004), both of which were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin.) The setting for all three novels is suburban Melbourne, a location firmly based on the Glenroy of Carroll's childhood. Carroll explains that he was drawing on his 'own territory' in the books and that his 'just happened to be the suburbs'. He says: 'I couldn't fabricate it otherwise, and I actually found it quite fascinating to dig deep into suburban life but not in the way that so often happens in Australian plays and culture ... as a site for satire or sitcoms but not very often for what you might call literary fiction.' Acknowledging that the 'stock in trade of Australian literature' tends to be the 'rural frontier', Carroll suggests that the 'suburban frontier' has been neglected and that 'the big things of life do happen in those weatherboard stick houses'. (Canberra Times, 21 June 2008)

The Miles Franklin judges described The Time We Have Taken as 'a poised, philosophically profound exploration ... a stand-alone work that is moving and indelible in its evocation of the extraordinary in ordinary lives', and they posed their own questions about the suburban lives of Vic, Rita and Michael: 'What do they all make of their lives? Do they hear "the music of the years"? Or are they deaf, missing the wonder of it?' (Judges' report, June 2008) Carroll, it seems, suspects the latter. 'All three main characters are in a constant state of becoming, and either looking forward to some point of perfect being, when they're going to be happy, or looking back to some point when they were happy. But they take the moment for granted that they're living through'. (Age, 20 June 2008)

Steven Carroll has just completed a novel based on a moment in the life of T. S. Eliot and has recently re-written his 1998 novel The Lovesong of Lucy McBride. The new version, Twilight in Venice, is some 50,000 words shorter, eliminates several characters and incorporates additional material. Carroll is now considering a fourth book for his suburban family: 'As long as the enthusiasm and the charge [continue], and as long as the ideas feel okay, I'll keep writing'. (AAP bulletin, 22 June 2008)

Prizes Announced at ASAL
The annual ALS Gold Medal and the biennial Mary Gilmore Award were announced at the recent Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference held at Wollongong.

The Gold Medal, awarded annually for an outstanding literary work, was presented to Michelle de Kretser for The Lost Dog. The award judges commented: 'In The Lost Dog de Kretser constructs a narrative that moves between India and Australia, continuing her interest in the connections between family, geography and subjectivity.... De Kretser is a particularly humane writer whose fiction avoids any sense of complacency through her engagement with clashing cultural and ethnic identities.'

Other works shortlisted for the Gold Medal were the novels Feather Man by Rhyll McMaster and Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller, and the poetry collections Not Finding Wittgenstein by J. S. Harry and Typewriter Music by David Malouf.

The Mary Gilmore Award for a first book of poetry went to Nathan Shepherdson for Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror. Announcing the winner, the judges placed Shepherdson's work in the context of a quote from Mary Gilmore's essay 'On the Way to Bungendore': 'A word is a precious possession. To those who know how to hold it to the mind's eye and turn it to the light, long vistas lie in it, and fields of space and colour'.

The judges continued: 'Such is the accessibility of this work [Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror] – which is both elegy and eulogy to the figure we later learn is the speaker's mother. The success with which Shepherdson expresses grief without sentimentality; the clarity with which complex thoughts are conveyed – as in the subtle changes indicating transitions from direct address to the mother, to writing about her in the third person – all confirm the control with which Shepherdson approaches the "precious possessions" that allow "reflection" in a time of shadow.'

Also shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Award were:

• Event by Judith Bishop
• Honey and Salt by Angela Costi
• Man Wolf Man by Lucy Holt
• Press Release by Lisa Gorton
• With One Brush by Jan Dean
• Cube Root of Book by Paul Magee

and

• Fresh News from the Arctic by Libby Hart

The judges highly commended the collections by Holt and Magee.

A third award announced at the ASAL conference was the Magarey Prize, 'a biennial award of $10,000 awarded to the female person who has published the work judged to be the best biographical writing on an Australian subject'. From a shortlist of three, the judges chose Sylvia Martin's Ida Leeson: A Life. The panel noted that Martin's book was 'structured like a set of frames rather than a linear life', bringing into relief 'the rich literary, cultural and intellectual life of the nation through the life of Ida Leeson, and her under-acknowledged role in shaping those traditions'. The judges praised Martin's research and her 'nuanced' negotiation of 'Leeson's strident reputation, mode of dress and address, and her longterm friendship with Florence Birth'. They concluded: 'This is a compelling and intellectually fascinating book, which models the very best of contemporary biographical writing'.

Shortlist for First Prime Minister's Literary Awards

Arts Minister Peter Garrett announced the shortlists for the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Awards at the Mitchell Library, Sydney, on 6 August.

Mr Garrett said that the judges had settled on 'a particularly exciting list for the inaugural awards, with readers able to immerse themselves in prose, history, politics, tales of wartime life, stories of far away lands and some very Australian tales'. (Media release, 6 August 2008)

Shortlisted for the fiction prize are:

• Burning In by Mireille Juchau
• El Dorado by Dorothy Porter
• Jamaica by Malcolm Knox
• Sorry by Gail Jones
• The Complete Stories by David Malouf
• The Widow and Her Hero by Thomas Keneally

and

• The Zookeeper's War by Steven Conte

The seven nominations for the non-fiction prize include Clive James's Cultural Amnesia and Zarah Ghahramani's My Life as a Traitor (written with Robert Hillman).

The shortlisted works were chosen by two panels each comprising three judges. Judges for the fiction award are Professor Peter Pierce, author John Marsden and broadcaster Margaret Throsby; the non-fiction judges are Professor Hilary Charlesworth, artist and author Sally Morgan, and comedian and script writer John Doyle. Commenting on the range and quality of the fiction entries, Marsden said that what surprised him most was 'the confidence amongst our authors in writing about the world at large. I was just blown away by the overall quality, and shocked by these obscure novels from unknown writers which were brilliant.' (Awards e-newsletter, 22 July 2008)

Winners of the inaugural prizes are expected to be announced in September. The final selection will be made by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

To stay up to date with news about the Prime Minister's Literary Awards subscribe to the Awards e-newsletter. Visit the awards website and follow the link. The complete shortlists are also available on the website.

Red Ochre Award for Doris Pilkington Garimara
The Australia Council has presented its 2008 Red Ochre Award to activist, writer and reconciliation campaigner Doris Pilkington Garimara. The award 'pays tribute to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artist for their outstanding, life-long contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts at home and abroad'.

Garimara was born on Balfour Downs Station in the East Pilbara but was removed from her home as a toddler, together with her mother, Molly Craig, and her baby sister, Annabelle. They were sent to the Moore River Native Settlement from where Craig (carrying Annabelle) walked the 1,600 kilometres back to Jigalong. The story of this unrelenting journey was told in Garimara's 1996 biography Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence and subsequently adapted for Phillip Noyce's award-winning film Rabbit-Proof Fence.

In 2002 Garimara was co-patron (with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser) of the National Sorry Day Committee's Journey of Healing and in 2006 she was awarded membership in the Order of Australia 'for service to the arts in the area of Indigenous literature'. She tells her own life story in Under the Wintamarra Tree, published in 2002.

Chauncy Award Honours Margaret Wild
The winner of the 2008 Nan Chauncy Award for an outstanding contribution to children's literature in Australia is Margaret Wild. Wild has published nearly 70 titles, the majority being picture books. Three books have won Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards – The Very Best of Friends (1990), Jenny Angel (2000) and Fox (2001). Wild has also won premier's awards in various states, YABBA and KOALA awards (voted for by readers), and international awards including the IBBY Honour Diploma (2002) and the Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis (2004).

Wild's award citation says: 'Few writers have tackled such a wide range of topics and themes that enhance a child's understanding of self, others and the world. Margaret's picture books have both high literary quality and child appeal. Her signature works are simultaneously tough and tender as well as moving and memorable. They explore complex ideas and communicate on many levels.' Wild says of her writing: 'I don't want to write safe, bland books. I want to provoke a reaction, and I want to make people laugh and cry'. (CBCA website)

Book Industry Chooses Winners
Booksellers and publishers have selected the winners of the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) for 2008. Spread across 20 categories, the awards 'honour and recognise authors, booksellers and publishers'. Among this year's winners are:

• Book of the Year and Literary Fiction Book of the Year – Geraldine Brooks for People of the Book
• Australian General Fiction Book of the Year – Monica McInerney for Those Faraday Girls
• Book of the Year for Younger Children – Li Cunxin for The Peasant Prince, a children's version of Mao's Last Dancer

and

• Book of the Year for Older Children – John Flanagan for Erak's Ransom, book seven in the Ranger's Apprentice series. Flanagan also won the International Success Award for the Rangers Apprentice series.

Flanagan's series has been sold to publishers in fourteen countries including the United States, China and a range of European countries. On his website, Flanagan informs fans that he has just completed book eight in the series. It will be part of a two-volume adventure (with book nine) and is due for release in Australia in November 2008.

Also honoured at the Book Industry Awards were David Malouf (Lloyd O'Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry) and Kate Colley (Pixie O'Harris Award for distinguished and dedicated service to the development and reputation of Australian children's books).

A full list of winners is available on the Australian Publishers Association website.

Other Recent Award Announcements:

• Company B's production of Michael Gow's Toy Symphony won several categories at the 2008 Helpmann Awards. In addition to two acting awards, the play won Best New Australian Work and Neil Armfield won Best Direction of a Play. Company B also won the Best Regional Touring Production for 'Keating! A Country Soul Opera'. Best Presentation for Children was awarded to Patch Theatre Company's production of 'Mr McGee and the Biting Flea', a stage adaptation of six Pamela Allen picture books.
• Two resident Australians are among the 'baker's dozen' longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize: Michelle de Kretser for The Lost Dog and Steve Toltz for A Fraction of the Whole. The list also includes Sydney-educated Australian citizen Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger. (Adiga has lived in various countries including the UK and India.).
  
  103 books were submitted for the 2008 Booker Prize and the judging panel called in a further nine. In addition to the Australians, the longlist includes writers from Pakistan, India, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The shortlist will be announced on 9 September and the winner declared on 14 October.
• For the second year running, Michael Robotham has been on the shortlist, but not the winner's list, for the United Kingdom Crime Writers' Association's Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award. Robotham was this year shortlisted for his crime thriller Shatter. In 2007 he was nominated for The Night Ferry. (Robotham is the ambassador for the 2008 Books Alive campaign. His novella Bombproof is being given away with the purchase of any title from the Fifty Books You Can't Put Down guide).

and

Terry Dowling won the 2007 Australian Shadows Award for his horror short story, 'Toother'. Award judge Richard Harland described Dowling's story as 'a conscious extension of [Edgar Allen] Poe's "Berenice" ... whilst also drawing on some fascinating research into a very murky corner of history.... This is a story that does everything right.' (Australian Horror Writers Association website)

And Watch Out For:

• Winners of the 2008 AWGIE Awards will be announced at the Plaza Ballroom, Melbourne, on 15 August. Nominees include Debra Oswald for Stories in the Dark (Theatre for Young Audiences), Noelle Janaczewska for This Territory (Community and Youth Theatre) and Kate Mulvany for The Seed (Stage) – each of these plays has been published in 2008 by Currency Press. The winners of the Kit Denton Fellowship and the inaugural John Hinde Award for Science Fiction will also be announced on the awards' night.

and

• Also being announced in on 15 August are the winners of the 2008 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards. Thirty books are nominated including Colin Thompson's picture book Dust, a response to the deaths from starvation of thousands of people in Niger in Africa's central west. The full list of shortlisted works can be found on the CBCA's website.

and

• The 2008 Deadly Awards (recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievement in music, sport, entertainment and community) will be announced at the Sydney Opera House on 9 October. Nominated for Outstannding Achievement in Literature are Anita Heiss and Peter Minter (editors of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature), Yvette Holt (author of Anonymous Premonition), Gayle Kennedy (author of Me, Antman and Fleabag) and Tara June Winch (2008 recipient of the International Rolex Mentor/Protégé Arts Initiative).

Some Olympic Games Trivia from the AustLit Archives
The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games are now underway in China. Here is some Olympic trivia with an AustLit flavour:

• The earliest Olympic Games reference so far included in AustLit is from the pen of Randolph Bedford. Following the announcement in 1914 that Berlin would host the (later cancelled) 1916 Games, Bedford placed the sporting event squarely into a political context. He opened his poem '1916' with this stanza:
  

  On the marshy plain beside the River Spree
  Will be played the newest of Olympic games,
  When the Brandenburg march past in misery
  To atone for giving half a world to flames.
  
  (Bulletin, 8 October 1914)

  Bedford goes on to reflect on the fate of 'Kaisers and kings' – supported through the war by 'the poor who live in cellars' – who will, by the time of the Olympics, be 'out of work' and 'fearful of their crime'.
• Another Bulletin writer who turned to the Olympics for inspiration was Charles Hayward, a prolific exponent of doggerel. In 1928 Hayward considered the view of one Australian athlete that the team's poor performance in Amsterdam was due to the unsuitability of Dutch food:
  

  They got their handicap upon a platter,
  Their issue on a willow-patterned plate.
  ...
  No use dilating what might have been:
  They knuckled under to the Dutch cuisine.
  
  (Bulletin, 24 October 1928)

• In 1948, when the Games were held in London, Hayward reflected on the favourable reports extended to the dress style of the Australian women's team. He did, however, provide a salutary warning:

  Pleasant to learn our girls in this far setting
  Are with such keen appreciation viewed,
  To be assured they fairly top the betting,
  With native charm so lavishly endued;
  Still, 'twould be foolishness to be forgetting
  No points are scored for simple pulchritude
  In these Olympics held 'mid Wembley's buzz.
  Right there it's "Handsome is that handsome does."
  
  (Bulletin, 4 August 1948)

• Several of Australia's Olympians have preserved their memories in book form. These include, most recently, Lisa Forrest's Boycott: The Story Behind Australia's Controversial Involvement in the 1980 Moscow Olympics and Wyatt Thompson's Trailblazers: Australia's First Olympic Equestrians, both published in 2008.
• Merrick Webb, author of several collections of poetry, was one of the torch bearers for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. He was again part of the torch relay for the Sydney Olympics – on that occasion he was aged 88 and travelled in a wheelchair.
• After the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, journalist Anthony Sharwood wrote an account of his experiences as a 'cabbie', The Diary of an Olympic Cabbie: You Talkin' to Me? Others to draw inspiration from the Olympic Games include:
  • Matthew Condon in The Trout Opera
  • Crime novelists J. R. Carroll in Hard Yards and Shane Maloney in Nice Try
  
  and
  
  • Adrian D'Hage in the 2007 thriller The Beijing Conspiracy
• Noel Tovey, author of Little Black Bastard: A Story of Survival, was artistic director for the Indigenous Welcoming Ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics; dramatist Nigel Jamieson created the Tin Symphony element of Sydney's Opening Ceremony.
• William Tainsh wrote the lyrics of the specially commissioned song used at the Closing Ceremony of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Sung to the tune of Waltzing Matilda, Tainsh's 'Song of Farewell' melded Australian images such as swags, sliprails and 'the billy boiling' with echoes of his Scots heritage in the words 'Will ye no' come back again?' and also managed to include a phrase from an Indigenous language: 'Momok wonargo ora go-ya' (translated as: Farewell, brother. By and by come back).

and

• The Australia Council for the Arts awarded poet Mark O'Connor an $80,000 fellowship to 'report in poetry on all aspects of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games'. A selection of O'Connor's poems can be read on his Australian Poet website.

Debate on Parallel Importation Revived
A decision by the 3 July meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to ask the Productivity Commission to review laws governing the parallel importation of books has re-opened a protection versus 'open market' debate among Australia's writing and allied book industry communities. 'Parallel importation' relates to the legitimate importing of copyright materials. In the Australian book market, permission to import is currently required from the Australian copyright owner unless the book was not published in Australia within 30 days of its overseas publication or in some specific situations such as when a local order cannot be filled for more than 90 days (known as the '30/90 day rule'). (Adapted from the 2000-01 Copyright Amendment (Parallel Importation) Bill 2001)

Opinion is divided on the merits of change (if that is what the review recommends). The Australian Booksellers Association and representatives of the larger bookstore chains tend to favour a reduction in restrictions. Dymocks chief executive Don Grover expressed the view that everyone would benefit from the removal of the '30/90 day rule'. He posed this question to the Australian's Rosemary Sorensen: 'Why should Dymocks continue to put money into promoting Australian books when we are being forced to operate in an inefficient, protected environment?' Grover also noted the trend for book consumers to buy online: 'Our prices are 30 to 40 per cent higher than what a publisher will offer to a competitive online bookseller. How can publishers do that and expect me to be happy about it?' (26 July 2008)

But the Australian Publishers Association (APA) offers a different perspective to that of the large booksellers. APA chief executive Maree McCaskill told Bookseller + Publisher's Weekly Book Newsletter that her organisation would mount a campaign to educate the media and consumers about the complexities of parallel importation. McCaskill's view is that the removal of restrictions would have negative ramifications for publishers, local book printers and authors. (9 July 2008) McCaskill's view is supported by the Printing Industries Association of Australia and the Australian Literary Agents Association, both of whom are directly lobbying the Australian Government on the issue. (See their respective websites for more detail.)

The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) is also strongly opposed to any change in the current regulations and is encouraging its members to write 'to the Prime Minister, the Federal Attorney General, their Premier and their State Attorney General' to voice their concern. One member who has already taken up the challenge is Nick Earls.

Earls wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister on 8 July in which he stated his opinion that a loosening of restrictions would be 'a strong disincentive towards the publishing of Australian stories, and to the unearthing and nurturing of new talent'. Earls suggests that the New Zealand experience of allowing parallel imports has diminished opportunities for new writers and that New Zealand's 'capacity to produce great novelists of the calibre of those it has produced in the past seems to be seriously under threat'. Earls also highlights the changes that can be required before an Australian book is published in an export market. 'Many Australian references are lost and idiomatic language is altered. These are compromises we make in order to be published [overseas] ... but for Australian readers they would make the book an inferior product ... These books are not the same, but they would be sold as if they were.' (8 July 2008) (Full text available on the ASA's website.)

Another Australian writer to enter the debate is Garth Nix, widely published in Australia, the UK and the USA and many other countries. Nix wrote to Bookseller + Publisher expressing his surprise that some in the book industry believe an 'open market' approach is a good one. As one of those who participated in the 2001 Senate Committee review on possible changes to parallel importation rules, Nix responded to news of another new review with a 'sinking heart'. He believes that, rather than creating an 'open market', the weakening of regulations would actually create a 'surrendered market'. Under this scenario Australian publishers would have to compete with US and UK publishers. 'Without the security they need to invest in publishing their top-selling authors, what will most of the bigger Australian publishers be forced to do?' asks Nix. The answer: 'Revert to being distributors of US and UK product again, as they mostly were up to the 1970s, and not bother trying to develop and build up an Australian author'.

Nix reinforces Earls's comments on the effect of a change on new authors. In a 'brave new world of a Surrendered Market' beginning writers would be forced to go new small Australian presses or 'straight into competition against every English-speaking author in the world who wants to be published in the USA or the UK.' (The full text of Nix's letter is available on the ASA website.)

The Productivity Commission is expected to announce the terms of its inquiry into parallel importations in the coming weeks. The Coalition of Australian Governments wants to consider any recommended implementation plans at its 2 October 2008 meeting in Perth.

Several recent publications provide critical examinations of the contexts within which poetry is written. These include:

Networked Language: Culture and History in Australian Poetry by Philip Mead

Dr Mead writes: 'Networked Language is the result of a fascination with poetic language and with the networks of culture and history within which it lives. The language of poetry, which may appear obscure or annoyingly uncommunicative, is nevertheless always meaningful in the time and place of its creation. This study presents new ways of understanding Australian poetry, drawing on an equal fascination with the artifice of poetry and the complexity of culture. It is about the way poetry changes in relation to its social, political and historical contexts, the way poetic communities and the readerships of poetry have changed through history, and continue to change in the present.'

Networked Language is published by Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Disclosed Poetics by John Kinsella

'In Disclosed Poetics John Kinsella explores a contemporary poetics and pedagogy as it emerges from his reflections on his own writing and teaching, and on the work of other poets, particularly contemporary writers with which he feels some affinity.  

At the heart of the book is Kinsella's attempt to elaborate his vision of a species of pastoral that is adequate to a globalised world (Kinsella himself writes and teaches in the USA, the UK and his native Australia), and an environmentally and politically just poetry.

The book has an important autobiographical element, as Kinsella explores the pulse of his poetic imagination through significant moments and passages of his life. Whilst theoretically informed, the book is accessibly written and highly engaging, and will be of great interest as a teaching text for those leading classes in contemporary poetry creative writing and postcolonial literatures.' (Manchester University Press)

Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women's Poetry by Ann Vickery

In her introduction to Stressing the Modern Ann Vickery writes that her book 'is the first major study of modern Australian women's poetry. As it demonstrates, the first part of the twentieth century was a prolific period for women poets. The work they produced challenged previously given roles of gender and negotiated a rapidly changing social climate. Australia became an independent nation in 1901. By 1903, it "was the only country where white women could both vote and stand for national parliament". Poetry written between 1900 and 1940 reflected the suffrage movement, as well as the effects of Federation, World War I, increasing industrialisation and emergent discourses of sexology and psychology. New subject formations were taking place around gender, race, and nationalism. Women writers would also move between contrasting sensibilities and styles.'

Vickery's study looks at the poetry of seven women writers: Mary Gilmore, Marie Pitt, Mary Fullerton, Anna Wickham, Zora Cross, Lesbia Harford and Nettie Palmer.

Continuing the poetry theme, here is news of two upcoming poetry conferences – one with a national focus and the other, an international one.

State of Play: Australian Poetry Now
The sixth Australian Poetry Festival runs from 5 to 7 September 2008.The central festival panel, taking place in on 7 September, will explore the theme 'State of Play: Australian Poetry and Poetics Now'. Parallel panels will also be held in Melbourne and Perth and a similar one has already been successfully conducted at the Sydney Writers Festival. The papers from these panels, and from other festival events, will be published in a special double edition of Five Bells that will appear early in 2009. Festival director Brook Emery writes: 'We hope this will be a serious contribution to thinking about Australian poetry'.

See the full festival program on the Poets Union website.

Wind over Water – Haiku Conference
The fourth Haiku Pacific Rim Conference will be held in Terrigal on the New South Wales Central Coast from 22 to 25 September 2009. Beverley George, conference convenor and president of the Australian Haiku Society (HaikuOz), can provide more detailed information. Contact her by email at beverleygeorge@idx.com.au with 4th HPR enquiry and your surname in the subject line.

National Library Celebrates First Forty Years in 'New' Home
August 2008 marks 40 years since the official opening of the present National Library of Australia (NLA) building. The library had previously been housed in the Parliamentary Building, Melbourne, and in various locations around Canberra. The NLA is hosting a range of events and an exhibition to mark the anniversary. The exhibition 'The Opening Chapter: Building the National Library' opened in the library's Visitor Centre in April and will continue until 16 November. It includes 'original watercolours of the proposed interior spaces, digital prints of the stunning building art and nostalgic images of areas that no longer exist'.

On 25 August, a day of celebrations will take place at the library. A film detailing the construction of the NLA will be screened, art historian Sasha Grishin will discuss the work of artist Leonard French (designer of the Library's stained glass windows) and the NLA's Director General, Jan Fullerton, will reflect on the Library as it was in 1968 and the ways in which it has changed.

Full details of the celebratory program are available on the 'News and Events' section of National Library's website.

100 Years in Australia for Oxford University Press
In 2008 Oxford University Press (OUP) celebrates 100 of publishing in Australia. OUP Australia is part of the Press's worldwide organisation and maintains OUP's broad aim of propagating 'the liberal objectives of the University: to further education and learning'. Richard Harms, Director of OUP Australia's dictionary and trade division, says that the Press's 'first "completely" Australian title' was Ernest Scott's A Short History of Australia (1916). But it was not until World War II, and the accompanying shortage of imported books, that a truly local market developed. In the post-war period OUP Australia became 'a genuine overseas branch of a university press with a genuinely indigenous (and largely autonomous) publishing program of its own'. (Bookseller + Publisher Magazine, June 2008)

OUP Australia is now well known for its dictionaries, reference works and text books. Its publications include The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1985 and 1991), Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing (1993), The Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature (1993), Great Southern Landings: An Anthology of Antipodean Travel (1995) and Digger Speak: The Language of Australians at War (2005).

To celebrate its milestone, OUP has organised a range of events and publishing activities for 2008. The Australian National Dictionary, first published in 1988, will be made available free online as the Press's 'gift to the Nation' and, in October, OUP will publish Speaking Our Language: The Story of Australian English by Bruce Moore, Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre.

Rodney Seaborn (1912-2008)
Rodney Seaborn had a successful career as a psychiatrist, incorporating work on treatments for drug and alcohol dependency. But he is also deeply respected and honoured in Australia's theatre community for his outstanding philanthropy. In 1986, when the Griffin Theatre looked set to lose its home in Kings Cross, Seaborn established the SBW Foundation and bought the Stables Theatre for Griffin. The SBW Foundation (named for Seaborn and his cousins Peter Broughton and Leslie Walford) exists 'to benefit the performing arts in Australia' and over the last 22 years it has supported more than 20 organisations including New Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre and the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in addition to maintaining its support of Griffin Theatre.

The Foundation also established the Rodney Seaborn Playwright's Award 'for the development of a play or other approved performing arts project'. The award was instituted 'to encourage the writing of plays emphasising positive values such as faith, hope and love, and to counter what Dr Seaborn saw as an undue emphasis on the negative or less salutary aspects of life to be found in much contemporary theatre'. Jointly with NIDA, the Foundation has also worked to establish an archives and performing collection relating to Australian theatre.

The Hon Justice Lloyd Waddy paid tribute to Dr Seaborn in a eulogy delivered at Seaborn's funeral on 26 May 2008. Waddy opened his address by saying: 'ever since I heard the melancholy news of Rod's death I have had some lines of Chaucer's 'Prologue' of his Canterbury Tales on my mind:

A Knight there was, and that a worthy man
That from the time that he first began
To riden out, he loved chivalry
Truth and honour, freedom and curtesy.
Ever honoured for his worthiness
And though that he were worth, he was wise
He never yet no villainy ne sayde
In all his life unto no manner wight
He was a varray, parfit, gentil knight.

Justice Waddy's illumination of that depiction can be read in full on the SBW Foundation's website.

Mary Lord (1929-2008)
Mary Lord's career stretched across the fields of academia and librarianship. She was a founding member of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature(ASAL) and an executive director of the National Book Council. As well as radio plays, feature articles and theatre and book reviews, Lord also wrote several books on Hal Porter (with his imprimatur) and a standard reference work, Directory of Australian Authors. Lord's work on Porter included selecting and editing the content of The Portable Hal Porter (1980, 1989) and writing the biography Hal Porter: A Man of Many Parts (1993).

In the final weeks of her life, Lord was contacted by ASAL with the news that a tribute would be paid to her during the 2008 ASAL conference. Lord's key role in Australian literary culture over several decades and her legacy as a founding member of ASAL was subsequently acknowledged among the conference delegates.