Beret Caps a Remarkable Acquisition
On Friday 3 November the National Library of Australia announced the acquisition of a remarkable collection – 33 archive boxes of Patrick White's personal papers and belongings. Manuscripts believed to have been burnt by White are now housed in the Library's Manuscript Collection under the curatorship of former AustLit Project Manager, Dr Marie-Louise Ayres. Selected items from the collection (including White's beret, captured in Brendan Hennessy's 1984 photograph) are on display in the Library's Visitor Centre until 28 January 2007.

For more news of the acquisition of the White papers and responses to the announcement, see This Month's Spotlight

New Canberra Streets Honour Women Writers
The streets in the Canberra suburb of Franklin – named after Miles Franklin – will honour Australian women who excelled as writers, academics and public servants. Streets already gazetted include Minnie Bruce Street (after children's novelist Mary Grant Bruce), Tomasetti Crescent (after poet and singer/songwriter Glen Tomasetti) and Fortune Lane (after crime writer Mary Fortune). Other streets will bear the names of Nancy Cato, Thea Astley and Judith Wright.

A full list of the 28 names selected so far is available on the ACT Government's Planning and Land Authority website and further information (including a map) can be found on the Disallowable Instruments site. ACT Place Names Officer Lorraine Bayliss, who is using AustLit in the course of her research for Australian women writers, is happy to receive suggestions for additional names. Submissions are placed in the Nomenclature Database for future consideration and research. Over the next 12 months place names will be sought for 'Indigenous Leaders', 'Notable Aborigines' and 'Aboriginal Words'. Lorraine can be contacted via email at: lorraine.bayliss@act.gov.au

Changing Face of Script Development
The Australia Council has announced the creation of a new national organisation to develop writing for performance in Australia. The new body, to be known as PlayWriting Australia, replaces two now-defunct organisations, the Australian National Playwrights' Centre (ANPC) and Playworks. Established with initial funding of $330,000, PlayWriting Australia will be chaired by playwright and Queensland Theatre Company artistic director, Michael Gow. Gow hopes to create 'a dynamic national organisation that will quickly gain a reputation as a national hub for script development and which is central to theatre culture in Australia'. (Australia Council media release, 6 November 2006)

The ANPC has operated since 1973. At the 23 October ANPC Board meeting, the motion to cease operations was put by Katharine Brisbane who was present at the first meeting 33 years ago. Although the Board expressed concern over the process leading to the dissolution of the ANPC and Playworks, the meeting pledged 'full support for the new script organisation'. (ANPC media release, 1 November 2006)

Australian Poetry Centre Established in Melbourne
Thanks to $140,000 in funding from Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), the Poetry Australia Foundation (PAF) is set to establish a national centre for poetry at historic 'Glenfern' in East St Kilda, Melbourne. The new Centre will co-ordinate events to promote Australian poetry and will work to 'improve the teaching of poetry in schools and tertiary institutions'. The Centre also plans to development a national system of distribution for Australian poetry publications.

Ron Pretty, Director of the Poetry Australia Foundation, is enthusiastic about the Centre's development: 'For the first time, poetry will have a fully professional organisation, enabling it to take its rightful place among the major art forms ... What the Australian Poetry Centre will do is focus and co-ordinate that energy to further stimulate the growth of, and interest in, Australian poetry here and overseas.' The Centre will be managed by a Board of Directors, headed by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and by a full-time Director. (The closing date for applications for the Director's position has been extended until 23 January 2006. See the PAF's website for further details.)

The 'Glenfern' site for the Centre builds on an already established Australian literary foundation. The house was purchased by Captain John Theodre and Mrs Lucy Boyd (grandparents of Martin Boyd) in 1876. According to Brenda Niall, author of The Boyds : A Family Biography, the house remained in the Boyd family until 1907 although it was tenanted from 1898 to 1907. Today 'Glenfern' also incorporates writers' studios administered by the Victorian Writers' Centre.

Keneally Celebrated by National Library Friends
Thomas Keneally is the latest Australian to be honoured by the Friends of the National Library for his significant contribution to 'the creation of books and book culture in Australia'. Keneally's contribution was celebrated during an afternoon gathering at the National Library on 22 October and through the publication of tribute essays in Thomas Keneally : A Celebration. Peter Pierce, in the editor's essay, views Keneally in the following light: 'Keneally can sometimes seem the nearest that we have to a Balzac of our literature; he is in his own rich and idiosyncratic ways the author of an Australian "human comedy".'

Keneally is the recipient of a Booker Prize (for Schindler's Ark) and two Miles Franklin Awards (for Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete). He is the author of nearly thirty novels, a dozen works of non-fiction, several plays and a children's book. Keneally is currently engaged in writing a three-volume 'People's History of Australia' for publisher Allen and Unwin. The first volume is scheduled for release in late 2008.

Jose to Judge Asian Literary Prize
Nicholas Jose, author and chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, has been appointed as one of three judges for the new Asian Literary Prize. The award, sponsored by the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and the Man Group, is for an 'Asian novel as yet unpublished in English'. The novel may be translated or originally written in English. Focusing on 'Asian writing from Asia', the award recognises the increasing importance of Asian writing on the world literary scene and reflects the growing interest of international publishers in Asian literature.

Submissions for the inaugural prize are open until 31 March 2007. Following the selection of 20 longlisted works and then 5 shortlisted titles, the winner will be announced in November 2007.

Writers Meet Marathon Deadline
Sydneysider Robert Mac has conducted a second one-day writing marathon in the New South Wales capital. The event, called 'Once upon a Deadline', requires authors to travel a pre-set route through the Harbour City with a broadband-connected laptop. At the end of the day's writing, authors present their work in a public forum and are judged on their literary creations.

This year's marathon, held over a 10-hour period, took contestants to a Darlinghurst beauty salon, a Surry Hills laundromat, the Sydney cat and dog pound, and an appointment with a psychic. The judges chose Ian Pearlman as the 2006 winner, and the Bryce Courtenay People's Choice Award went to Lewie JPD. Pearlman's story was inspired by his visit to the pound, while Lewie wrote about a Japanese tourist visiting Australia's shores. Other contestants included Tara June Winch and J. C. Burke.

Mac plans to run the marathon in other cities across the world. The next 'Deadline' will be in New York in June 2007.

Book Thief Steals Top Spot at Amazon
Markus Zusak's The Book Thief has topped Amazon's Best Teen Books list for 2006. In a field dominated by North American writers – there is one British name in the top ten, plus an English-born Canadian and seven writers from the USA – Zusak headed the 'Editors' Picks' list. Amazon, the American electronic sales giant, divides children's books into three categories for its 'Best' list – Picture Books, Middle Readers and Teens. Earlier this year, Zusak achieved enviable book sales in the USA after his novel was featured on the American Broadcasting Company's breakfast programme, Good Morning America. (See AustLit News, April/May 2006) In Australia, The Book Thief was marketed for an adult audience and has not been re-published since its first appearance in September 2005.

A full list of Amazon's 2006 Best Books in all categories is available through the company's online retail site.

'We'll All Be Rooned' Inspires Artists
In 1921 'John O'Brien' (a nom de plume for Catholic priest Patrick Hartigan) published the poetry collection Around the Boree Log and Other Verses. Now, 85 years later, one the poems from the collection has inspired an exhibition by a group of Canberra-region artists. O'Brien's well-known poem 'Said Hanrahan' is the basis for the artworks with each artist responding to the pessimistic ruminations of a rural community in drought (and later flood). Titled 'Before the Year is Out', the exhibition was held at the Bungendore Wood Works Gallery over a four-week period and was opened by ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, on 4 November.

Images of the paintings are reproduced on the Exhibitions section of the Gallery website. The full text of Around the Boree Log is available through Project Gutenberg.

Freedom of Speech at Risk
AustLit's October/November Newsletter reported the release of a joint statement by prominent Australian and international literary and library organisations on the removal of books from university library shelves. ('Book Removal Causes Consternation') The statement read, in part: 'Australia's liberal and tolerant way of life is based on respect for each others' views and the freedom to state our opinions without fear of retribution or arrest. We have so many wonderful authors because they have the freedom to explore ideas and to stimulate us with their creativity.' The freedom of one writer, Sydney's John Dale, has been somewhat curtailed by the decision of Scholastic Australia to not publish his commissioned young adult novel, 'Army of the Pure'. Scholastic made its decision after canvassing the opinions of 'a broad range of booksellers and library suppliers' and receiving concerned feedback about the central role of a Muslim terrorist group in Dale's story. Scholastic's general manager, Andrew Berkhut, told the Australian newspaper: 'They all said they would not stock it and the reality is if the gatekeepers won't support it, it can't be published.' (Weekend Australian, 25-26 November 2006)

The Australian ran an editorial on the subject under the headline 'Boy's Own Censorship'. It noted that, while Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist and Andrew McGahan's Underground had escaped the censor's scythe, a 'kids' book' had fallen foul in a wary publishing climate. The Australian asserted that Dale's case showed 'the hypocrisy of the literary left, which refuses to be truly "edgy" and turn their pens against those who would really silence them, namely Islamofascist terrorists'. The editorial described Australians as 'neophytes when it comes to terrorism' and linked the absence of a terrorist attack on Australian soil to the country's inability to produce a writer 'who is up to the challenge' of writing on the subject. 'The attitude of publishers like Scholastic', it concludes, 'will only help ensure this never happens.' (25-26 November 2006)

Book Club Face-Off
Another item in the last AustLit newsletter noted the emergence of 'virtual' book clubs for those unable (or unwilling) to join regular face-to-face groups. ('"Virtual" Book Clubs Promoting Reading') Susan Wyndham, the Sydney Morning Herald's 'Undercover' columnist, has now added another option to the list. Wyndham has launched the 'Undercover' blog and book club on the Herald's website and is keen to see readers' comments and discussion on the new forum. A former literary editor for the Herald, Wyndham entices prospective club members with the following thought: 'Just think how much easier an online club is than a physical one: you don't have to dress, drive, park, take food and wine, or listen to your friends' personal problems.'

Wyndham might have tapped into a receptive vein. Writing in the Weekend Australian recently (25-26 November 2006) Diana Simmonds suggests that 'the most vexed issue facing women in the 21st century' may well be book club etiquette. In 'It's Never Easy to Turn Over an Old Leaf', Simmonds navigates the pitfalls involved in dealing with recalcitrant members, deciding to leave an established group or choosing to disband the whole affair. 'If all else fails', she says, 'and you really can't stand it any more: go overseas or into hospital for elective surgery.' And then, perhaps, you could join an online group.

• A seasonal suggestion and a New Year message from the literary archives:
  'When giving, give a book – and to overseas friends, a book redolent of Australia.' (All About Books, December 1936)



• 'May I be guided in the coming year in my efforts to unite people, through the written and spoken word, that we may abandon despair and apathy for a fresh belief in spiritual progress and universal peace.'
  (Patrick White, 1988 pocket diary, included in the recent acquisition of White papers by the National Library of Australia)

Inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature Announced
Helen Garner is the winner of the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature. The prize 'of the city and for the city' is presented by the Melbourne Prize Trust and runs in a three-year cycle. It began in 2005 with an award for Urban Sculpture; in 2007 a Music Prize will be offered. The Prize for Literature is awarded to 'a Victorian-based writer whose body of published or produced work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life'.

Speaking to the Age following the announcement, Garner said she could not imagine living any other life than a writing one: 'It's the only way of making sense of things. I don't feel I chose it. The idea of a "career" suggests a freight of purposefulness but I don't think that is my thing. A writer is driven; it's not something you choose.' (Age, 16 November 2006) Melbourne-based Garner was shortlisted for the $60,000 award with John Marsden, Alex Miller, Dorothy Porter and Hannie Rayson. She will receive half of the prize in cash and the remainder in the form of a travel scholarship.

The Melbourne Prize Trust also announced the winner of the $30,000 Best Writing Award. Choosing from a field of 10 finalists, the judges awarded the prize to Christos Tsiolkas for his 2005 novel, Dead Europe. The prize recognises 'a piece of published or produced work, in any genre, by a Victorian writer, 40 years and under, which is an outstanding example of clarity, originality and creativity'.

Executive Director and Founder of the Trust, Simon Warrender, said: 'As a community we need to celebrate literary excellence as an important part of our cultural tapestry.' Warrender believes the prize demonstrates 'the ability writers have to inform, entertain and empower all generations through writing'. (Media release, 13 September 2006)

The Melbourne Prize is funded with proceeds from the sale of Magic Pudding miniatures. Melbourne sculptor Louis Laumen created 75 bronze miniatures of his sculpture of The Magic Pudding characters. (The larger work is located in The Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.) The limited edition miniatures have been authorised for release under copyright from Norman Lindsay's family and can be ordered via the Trust's website.

Lurie's Career Honoured
Morris Lurie, author of a multitude of short stories, novels, picture books and plays, has won the 2006 Patrick White Award for a writer whose work is deemed to be under-recognised. Lurie, the son of immigrant Poles, spoke to Australian Jewish News after being told of the award: 'I grew up with this idea that Australia was not the real world. The real world was somewhere else.' With his typically quirky humour, he added: 'One of the greatest travel agents of the last century was Adolf Hitler. He was responsible for bringing my parents and a lot of other people here.' He also remembered the moment when he told his mother he wanted to be a writer: 'The look on my mother's face, it was two looks. One said, "But you'll starve. How will you look after yourself?" The other look was proud. It said, "That's the best job".' (13 November 2006)

Lurie's first novel, Rappaport, was published in London 40 years ago; in the following three decades he published a book in almost every year. Although his output has declined slightly in recent years, Lurie expects a new collection of short stories to be published in 2007. He acknowledges the importance of winning the award with these words: 'Writing for me is a conversation, and this award says in some strange way that someone is listening.' (Australian, 11 November 2006)

Earls Doubly Honoured
Nick Earls has been honoured twice this year in his adopted state of Queensland. In May Earls became Queensland's 2006 Multicultural Champion and in October he was named University of Queensland (UQ) Alumnus of the Year. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said that Earls was chosen as the state's champion because of his energetic and passionate advocacy for refugees and the disadvantaged. UQ's Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Michael Keniger, highlighted Earls's drive to 'improve conditions for people both locally and on a global scale'. (UQ News Online, 24 October 2006) A significant factor in both awards was Earls's involvement in the international aid agency, War Child. Earls was the founding Chair of War Child Australia in 2002 and held the position until earlier this year. He is now an ambassador for the organisation. The Girls' Night In and Kids' Night In anthologies, co-edited by Earls, have so far raised $3 million for War Child.

Inaugural PEN Award for Rosie Scott
In early November 2006 Rosie Scott was presented with the inaugural Sydney PEN Award in recognition of 'outstanding work by a Sydney PEN member in support of PEN's aims'. Sydney PEN is part of the worldwide PEN association of writers. The organisation exists 'to emphasise the role of literature in the development of mutual understanding and world culture; to promote literature in a variety of ways, including by opposing restraints on freedom of expression and working to promote literacy itself; and to act as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their views'.

Scott played a pivotal role in establishing PEN's Writers in Detention in Australia work and, with fellow PEN member Tom Keneally, co-edited the anthology Another Country (2004). The anthology features the writing of asylum seekers in Australia who had been held in detention centres.

Presenting the award to Scott, Sydney PEN President Angela Browne described Scott's work as 'inspirational, tireless, creative, utterly committed and highly effective'. (Presentation transcript)

Waverley Library Creates Award to Honour Buzo
The Waverley Library in Sydney established a new award in 2006 to honour the late Alex Buzo. Buzo was a foundation member of the Westfield/Waverley Library Literature Award committee and contributed significantly to the award's establishment. The Alex Buzo Prize is presented to finalists in the annual Waverley Award. The inaugural winners are:

• Gideon Haigh for Asbestos House
• Malcolm Knox for Secrets of the Jury Room
• Anne Manne for Motherhood
• Meg Stewart for Margaret Olley
• Gerald Stone for 1932 : A Hell of a Year

and

• Brenda Walker for The Wing of Night

The overall winner of the Westfield/Waverley Library Literary Prize for 2006 is Gideon Haigh.

NSW Premier's Literature Scholarship to Poet Teacher
Dr Louise Wakeling, poet, novelist and secondary school English teacher, has been awarded the 2006 New South Wales (NSW) Premier's Lend Lease English Literature Scholarship. Wakeling is currently teaching at Baulkham Hills High School in north-west Sydney and the scholarship will enable her to travel to the USA to learn how professional writers teach at college level. Wakeling says: 'I love teaching creative writing of all kinds. Poetry is my particular bias ... If you want to know what makes a nation tick – and if it has a heart – you look to its poets. They are like the canaries in the mine, if there is something wrong, the poet is usually on to it.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 28-29 October 2006)

The NSW Scholarship is open to all teachers, in government and non-government sectors, currently teaching English and Drama in a NSW secondary school.

Other Recent Award Winners

• Peter Temple and Laurie Duggan have been awarded Fellowships by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. The $90,000 fellowships, awarded only once in an artist's lifetime, are the Council's richest and most prestigious grants. Temple will use his fellowship to write the second novel in a trilogy that began with the award-winning Broken Shore. Duggan will focus on a series of documentary poems set in the UK.



• Kate Lyons is the winner of the 2006 New South Wales Writer's Fellowship. Lyons receives $20,000 to complete her realist novel, 'The Story of My Life'. Lyons says she will 'continue with and develop the literary themes, technical devices and social and cultural issues' she explored in her earlier work'.



• Mark Tredinnick is the winner of the recently announced 2005 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Judged by Adrienne Eberhard and Kevin Gillam, the prize was awarded to Tredinnick for 'The Child and Time'. The poem is published in the Spring 2006 issue of Island and is also available on the magazine's website.



• Nathan Shepherdson has won the Open Section of the 2006 Newcastle Poetry Prize. Shepherdson's poem, 'Eve 1528', is included with other prize-winning poems in the anthology, The Honey Fills the Cone.



• Tim Flannery is one of the awardees in the 2006 Lannan Literary Awards. The US-based awards are presented annually in poetry, fiction and non-fiction categories, and honour writers of exceptional quality who 'have made significant contributions to English-language literature'. Flannery is this year's winner in the non-fiction category for his writing in the field of environmental science.



• Singer/songwriter and critic, Robert Forster, is the latest recipient of the Geraldine Pascall Prize for Critical Writing. The judges, who included previous winner Peter Craven, declared it a pleasure to give the award 'to a critic who is also such an eloquent and engaging writer'. Other past winners include David Malouf (1988), Marion Halligan (1990) and Gerard Windsor (2005).



• Patrick Brammall and John Leary share the 2006 Philip Parsons Young Playwrights' Award for their first play, 'The Suitors'. The duo receives a writers' commission for a B Sharp production at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre in 2007 or 2008.

IMPAC Longlist Announced
The longlist for the 2007 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award includes 12 titles from Australia. Nearly 140 books were nominated by 169 participating libraries from around the world. Four Australian books received multiple nominations: Geraldine Brooks's March, Kate Grenville's The Secret River, Heather Rose's The Butterfly Man and Carrie Tiffany's Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living. Also nominated are Brian Castro for The Garden Book, Sonya Hartnett for Surrender, Roger McDonald for The Ballad of Desmond Kale, Eva Sallis for The Marsh Birds and Ian Townsend for Affection.

J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man was selected by libraries in Colombia and Ireland, Bryce Courtenay's Whitethorn was a South African choice and Catherine Rey's The Spruiker's Tale was nominated by a French library in Lyon. March and The Secret River also attracted international nominations from the USA and Hungary respectively.

The shortlist for the award is announced in early April 2007; the winner is declared two months later on 14 June. A full list of nominations, including a synopsis of each book, is available on the IMPAC website.

Rumours of Manuscript-Burning Greatly Exaggerated
'The old bastard', said David Marr, author of the 700-plus page biography, Patrick White : A Life. Marr was responding to the news that the National Library of Australia had been offered a collection of Patrick White's original manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and personal memorabilia by the Nobel laureate's literary agent and executor, Barbara Mobbs. White had repeatedly told his biographer that no drafts or manuscript versions of his writing existed. '"Don't bother hunting", White had snapped at Marr, "they've all gone into the pit".' (Sydney Morning Herald, 3 November 2006)

Marr was not alone in being misled. In 1997 White wrote to George Chandler, Director-General of the National Library, stating plainly that the Library could not acquire his papers 'as I don't keep any ... My manuscripts are destroyed as soon as the book is published and I put very little into notebooks, don't keep my friends' letters as I urge them not to keep mine, and anything unfinished when I die is to be burnt'. In fact, the collection now obtained by the National Library includes:

• research for each of White's novels
• all drafts for White's autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
• two unpublished novels and an unpublished novella
• ten notebooks with ideas, jottings and poetry dating back to the 1930s

and

• nearly 200 letters and cards of condolence sent to White's partner, Manoly Lascaris

If Marr's reaction was a wry nod to the trick played on him, Dr Marie-Louise Ayres's was one of absolute astonishment. Dr Ayres, Curator of Manuscripts at the National Library, told ABC Radio's AM programme: 'Everybody ... believed that these papers didn't exist, that they'd been destroyed. So it was really just ... it was impossible and yet it was happening.' (3 November 2006) During August, Dr Ayres had been on duty in the normally hushed environment of the Manuscripts Reading Room. She confesses to letting out 'a very loud gasp' when she read the email offering the papers to the Library. Ayres subsequently spent a week appraising the collection. 'That week', she says, 'was one of the most wonderful things I've done in my career.' (Canberra Times, 4 November 2006)

The National Library enlisted the assistance of Sydney bookseller Nicholas Pounder to value the collection. Initially, Pounder thought he was the victim of a hoax, but describes his experience of first seeing the queues of archive boxes in the National Library's Manuscripts section as 'quite breathtaking'. Pounder was one of many who believed that White's papers had been destroyed: 'I can remember once having a bruise on my arm from Patrick squeezing me above the elbow saying, "You'll never find one", and that was just referring to a copy of his first little booklet, Thirteen Poems'. (Canberra Times, 4 November 2006) What Pounder discovered in Canberra was an unparalleled collection: 'there is really nothing to equal this material'. (Sydney Morning Herald, 3 November 2006)

The literary community is relieved and grateful that Barbara Mobbs felt unable to carry out White's instructions to destroy documents remaining after his death. Mobbs told the Sydney Morning Herald, 'I am doing what I think is right.' She explained that she had not been waiting 'for any particular occasion' to release the papers, except that she had chosen to wait until after the death of Lascaris. The terms of White's will stipulated that the income from his estate would go to Lascaris and, following Lascaris's death, would be divided equally between four beneficiaries: the Aboriginal Education Council of New South Wales, the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA), the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Smith Family. Each of those organisations has now received an undisclosed sum from the sale to the National Library. (They also received funds in April 2005 from the sale of White's Centennial Park home after the National Trust was unable to secure sufficient government interest in retaining the house as part of the national estate.)

A detailed description of the White collection is available in 'Guide to the Papers of Patrick White', an online finding aid prepared by Manuscripts' staff at the National Library. The collection is already available for reference and no doubt will be accessed by some of those preparing papers for the 'Patrick White Remembered' conference to be held in Sydney in May 2007. Next year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Voss and the conference will provide an occasion to 'examine the persistence of [White's] significance, as well as its fragility, and to pose larger questions about the relevance of Australian literature'. Conference details are available on the Evatt Foundation's website.

The National Library will also be hosting a Patrick White event in 2007. Further details of this event, along with a 'behind the scenes' reflection from Dr Marie-Louise Ayres on the White acquisition, will be available in the February/March 2007 issue of the AustLit newsletter.

Revival of Interest in Campbell Legacy
A remarkable resurgence of interest in the work of poet David Campbell has been evident in 2006. In April, Campbell's previously unpublished novella Strike was published, edited by the historian and former curator at the National Library of Australia, John Thompson. Strike draws vividly on Campbell's experience as a fighter pilot defending Australia's northern coastline during World War II, including bombing raids over New Guinea and reconnaissance flights over Timor.

In October the National Library published Letters Lifted into Poetry, edited by Jonathan Persse. Persse originally set out to research and write a life of Campbell but 'went off at a tangent' when he discovered nearly 400 letters, held in the National Library's manuscript collection, between Campbell and fellow poet Douglas Stewart. The title for the Persse's volume comes from Stewart's last letter to Campbell in June 1979 in which he wrote: 'whatever happened to be outside the window, or seen in a morning's walk – hawk or swallow or dabchick – lifted a letter into poetry'. (An article by Persse on his experience of editing this volume appears in National Library of Australia News, November 2006. It can be read online via the News's website.)

Also in October, Ginninderra Press published a new selection of Campbell's poetry, Hardening of the Light, edited with an introduction by Dr Philip Mead, AustLit Advisory Board member and co-ordinator of the Literature of Tasmania subset. This is the first selection of Campbell's work to appear since his Collected Poems, edited by Leonie Kramer, in 1989.

All three publications are sure to prompt further interest in the writings of one of Australia's finest lyric poets, both in Australia and overseas.

Phoenix Rises Again
A journal titled 'Phoenix' is making a return to Australia's bookshelves. Students from The University of Sydney's Master of Creative Writing Program have recently launched, Phoenix : The University of Sydney Writers Journal. The new journal showcases the poetry and fiction writing of graduating students from the Writing Program and chose its title to connect to earlier 'Phoenix' incarnations. In his introduction to the first issue joint editor, Dr David Brooks, explains the literary lineage from the 1940s periodical Phoenix to the 1980s-1990s Phoenix Review. (The former arose from the ashes of Angry Penguins; the latter was edited by Brooks when he was based at the Australian National University in Canberra.)

In addition to the students' writing, the inaugural issue carries essays by three teachers in the Writing Program – Delia Falconer, Noel Rowe and the journal's co-editor Judith Beveridge – in which each author takes a detailed look at their own writing process.

Phoenix is published by Sydney University Press. It is available direct from the Press via its web-ordering service.

For a comprehensive view of new publications in Australian literature, plus reviews and critical articles, see AustLit's Hot Off the Presses listing.

Radio Theatre Company Seeks New Plays
Insight Presents, Australia's only live radio theatre company, is seeking scripts for its inaugural radio script competition. Submissions should be 'half-hour, self-contained radio plays that are original, appeal to a general audience, and can satisfy both a live audience and a radio audience'.

Two scripts will be chosen to be 'produced, performed, recorded and potentially broadcast to a national audience'. Both scripts will be workshopped prior to performance in South Australia during July 2007.

Further information on submitting an entry can be found on Insight's website. The competition runs from 1 January to 31 March 2007.

One Book Many Brisbanes Story Competition
Entries will soon close for this year's One Book Many Brisbanes short story competition. 2005 was the inaugural year for this competition; it replaced the Brisbane City Council's previous literature promotion, One Book One Brisbane. The new venture allows Queensland-born writers and permanent residents of the Sunshine State to enter short stories of between 4,000 and 6,000 words. The stories must be set in Brisbane. Ten winning entries are chosen and then published in an anthology. Last year's anthology, One Book Many Brisbanes: An Anthology of Brisbane Stories, is now available and winning entries can also be read on the Brisbane City Council's website.

An entry form for the 2006 competition is available via the Council's One Book Many Brisbanes link. Entries close on Monday, 11 December.

London Calling
The recently formed Australian and New Zealand Libraries and Archives Group (ANZLAG) is holding an informal one-day workshop in London on 20 April 2007. ANZLAG is keen to hear from librarians, archivists and collection curators who wish to offer brief descriptions of their Australian and New Zealand holdings. Researchers are also welcome to contribute papers about their experiences of using libraries and archives. Ten minute collection overviews, panel sessions and longer papers are invited. The workshop will be held at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College.

Contact Dr Lara Cain Gray, Australia and New Zealand Curator at the British Library for more information:
Phone: +44 (0)20 7412 7616
Email: lara.cain-gray@lb.uk

ASAL Conference to Explore Past and Present
The Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) is sponsoring 'The Colonial Present : Australian Writing for the 21st Century' at The University of Queensland, 1-4 July 2007,. The conference will explore 'the temporal continuum of a past that "is not even past", and the austral convergences of literatures across the Southern hemisphere'.

Proposals for 20-minute papers are invited on the following themes:

• legacies, complicities and implications across the South
• transnational and postcolonial frameworks in current criticism
• the role of testimony, memoir and life narrative
• the presence of poetry

and

• the historical novel and millennial writing

Further details will be available soon on the ASAL website. Please send 300-word abstracts along with a brief biography to Gillian Whitlock: g.whitlock@uq.edu.au or Chris Tiffin: C.Tiffin@uq.edu.au by 23 February 2007.

Indigenous Lives 2007
The Humanities Research Centre (HRC) at the Australian National University will host 'Indigenous Lives 2007', a conference on indigenous biography and indigenous autobiography, 9-12 July 2007.

Conference organisers invite contributions, especially from biographers of Indigenous people, and from Indigenous autobiographers. Contributions are also welcomed from those concerned with portraying Indigenous lives in the artistic, visual and performing arts.

Proposals and abstracts should be sent to Professor Peter Read (peter.read@anu.edu.au) by 28 February 2007. Details of conference themes are available via the conference section of the HRC website.

Submissions for AustLit's Black Words Subset
Dr Anita Heiss, who is the Co-ordinating Advisor on the re-development of AustLit's Black Words: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Story Tellers subset, is inviting submissions of relevant essays, articles, papers, and speeches that may have been delivered at conferences or writers' festivals for possible inclusion in the subset.

For further information contact Dr Heiss via email at: info-austlit@austlit.edu.au or curringa@ozemail.com.au

Oceanic Inscriptions Wanted
Dr Jean-Francois Vernay is calling for papers on the theme of 'Inscriptions' for an upcoming issue of Correspondances Oceaniennes. Dr Vernay welcomes contributions of short essays and fiction (1,000-1,500 words), and illustrations related to the theme, within the scope of Oceanic cultures.

Dr Vernay is the author of the forthcoming critical collection Water from the Moon : Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch.

For further information on submissions to Correspondances Oceaniennes contact Dr Vernay via email at vernayj@yahoo.com.

ASAL Mini-Conference Honours Professor Elizabeth Webby
The Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) is holding a mini-conference at the Women's College, The University of Sydney, 2-3 February 2007. Titled 'New Reckonings: Australian Literature – Past, Present and Future', the conference is timed to coincide with the retirement of Professor Webby from the Chair of Australian Literature at the University. Professor Webby is also a member of the AustLit Advisory Board.

Early Bird registration is available for the conference until 15 December. For full registration details and a draft programme visit the conference website.

For more events, submission requests and other literary opportunities see AustLit's Events Directory. If you have new events of interest to the Australian literature, teaching and research communities and the general public please complete the form provided on the Events Submission page on our website.

Gwen Meredith (1907-2006)
The words 'blue hills' conjure a particular scene in the Australian psyche: it's lunchtime in the mid-20th century and farmers, urban workers and housewives are gathered around the radio to hear the latest instalment in what may be the longest running radio soap opera in Australian radio history. For 5,795 episodes Australians listened to Gwen Meredith's radio serial, Blue Hills. It was broadcast on the ABC from 8 February 1949 to 30 September 1976 and followed 1,299 episodes of Meredith's other major serial, The Lawsons (1944-1949).

Gwen Meredith was contracted to the ABC in 1943 to write radio plays, serials and documentaries. The initial brief was to write a story for broadcast during the Country Hour that would promote new agricultural technologies to Australian farming communities. Rather than writing the script by hand or on a typewriter, Meredith recorded the dialogue onto a tape machine and it was then transcribed for the actors. A close friend of Meredith's, Ian Doyle, explained: 'That's why the people who were in Blue Hills felt as if the serial had a real life to it, because Gwen actually spoke the words before they were typed.' (Australian, 5 October 2006)

Meredith's contribution to the golden age of Australian radio was acknowledged in 1966 when she was awarded a Civilian Service Medal; in 1977 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her services to the arts.

The ABC has recently released a set of five CDs titled Nostalgia Box. The set includes a selection of Blue Hills episodes from the broadcaster's archives, along with highlights from the children's radio programme The Argonauts, and a full narration of C. J. Dennis's The Moods of Ginger Mick.

Liz (Betty) Collins (1921-2006)
Liz Collins is best remembered in literary circles for her 1966 novel The Copper Crucible, depicting an industrial relations struggle in the mining town of Mount Isa. Collins's passionate commitment to social and political causes is evident in this realist, working class novel. According to Collins's daughter, Mahni Dugan, that dedication never left Collins – she was 'just as passionate about her causes, as fiercely individual, intelligent, iconoclastic and outspoken to her last days'. ('Her Fight for Causes was a Fight for the Future', Sydney Morning Herald, 11-12 November 2006)

In turn a Protestant, a Roman Catholic and a Communist, Collins was an early member of the Realist Writers' Group and mixed with Frank Hardy, Dymphna Cusack and Mary Gilmore. She resigned from the Communist Party in the late 1960s and turned her attention to Zen Buddhism and Hinduism. Questions of faith, philosophy and human potential dominated Collins's later writing. In the final phase of her life, Collins sustained her vocation as agitator and advocate, arguing for better quality in aged care services.

Sasha Soldatow (1947-2006)
When Penguin published Sasha Soldatow's short story collection Private : Do Not Open in 1987, it marked one of the earliest occasions on which a mainstream Australian publisher had put its name to an explicitly gay book. In addition to publishing his own stories and poems, Soldatow edited a collected works of Harry Hooton's poems, Poet of the 21st Century (1990), and collaborated with Christos Tsiolkas in the autobiographical Jump Cuts (1996).

According to his obituarist, David Marr, Soldatow has requested that a literary prize be established in his memory 'to honour writers who haven't had the recognition they deserve'. Lack of recognition was a theme of Soldatow's life. In 1990 he (unsuccessfully) sued the Australia Council for failing to offer him a literary grant. Soldatow told a newspaper at the time: 'I know this looks like sour grapes, but I think I represent all those authors who have been set outside the cabal of chosen writers which distributes the taxpayers' money each year'. (Sun-Herald, 2 December 1990)

Marr notes that Soldatow's 'last publication will be the words he ordered for his tombstone: I see'.

New grant for further AustLit development
AustLit has been successful in attracting Australian Research Council (ARC) funding in 2007 under the Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme. With the inclusion of the University of Wollongong as a partner in this grant application, the AustLit consortium has now grown to eleven universities and the National Library of Australia. Led by The University of Queensland, the 2007 grant will enable major progress in reaching our goal of achieving a comprehensive record of Australia's published literature in book form. A large contingent of the AustLit team of researchers and indexers are working alphabetically through the List of Australian Writers (1788-1992) (which was absorbed into AustLit at its inception) undertaking biographical and bibliographical research to disclose the rich history of Australia-identified writing across all creative writing genres. The outcome of this research will be a massive enhancement of AustLit content as well as the publication of the final volumes of The Bibliography of Australian Literature. The third volume of BAL will be published early in 2007.

In addition to this major achievement, AustLit will also further develop a number of currently supported specialist subsets including the Black Words: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Story Tellers, the publishers of Australian literature project, The Literature of Tasmania, The Writers of Tropical Queensland and Australian Multicultural Writers. The success in the LIEF grant was echoed by successes in the ARC's Discovery – Projects scheme with a number of associated researchers receiving funding for other Australian literature projects which will see the development of new subsets published in AustLit and new revelations about the rich history of Australian print and literary culture.

The ARC's and partner universities' support of AustLit and for associated projects is a concrete demonstration of the fact that AustLit is now regarded as research infrastructure for literary scholars enabling them to use AustLit, not only as a source for enhanced data to interrogate, but as a repository for foundational research results which can be used for fresh understandings and scholarly analysis.

Keep an eye on AustLit over the coming months to see the fruits of these labours begin to appear.

AustLit Farewells Team Members
AustLit extends its thanks to team members who have worked on special projects during 2006 and will not be returning in the New Year. The expertise and collegiality brought by each person has enhanced AustLit and contributed to the widening knowledge-base available in 'The Resource for Australian Literature'. We wish departing team members well in their endeavours for 2007.

New AustLit Records
During October and November 2006, the Content Development Team added:

• 9,377 new works
• 1,910 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, over 13,200 existing work and agent records have been upgraded and enhanced.

We welcome your feedback on our service, and will work hard to develop content and services to meet your needs. If you have any comments and suggestions, please contact us at:

info-austlit@austlit.edu.au

Or spend two minutes filling out our User Survey form.