Rayson Play Provokes Strong Reaction
Hannie Rayson's latest play 'Two Brothers' has stirred strong responses from newspaper reviewers, editors and letter writers. Rayson's play premiered at the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne on 13 April 2005 and highlights issues surrounding Australia's border security. The play's central incident concerns the sinking of a refugee ship, the Kelepasan, in Australian waters. James 'Eggs' Benedict, Minister for Home Security and one of the two brothers of the play's title, refuses to allow a navy vessel to rescue the survivors. In a review of the opening night, theatre critic Helen Thomson wrote that 'Rayson has skillfully condensed and dramatised a national narrative into a family drama...' and affirmed Garry McDonald's portrayal of the 'hateful' minister as 'one that provocatively pushes the political beyond ideology to its moral bedrock.' (Age, 14 April 2005)

Two days later the Age's national news editor, Tom Hyland, declared that a play that puts 'prejudice before facts does a disservice to an important debate.' His opinion was that Rayson had sidestepped the 'complex moral issues' and produced a 'piece of propaganda that deals in stereotypes'. He thought her research had 'ignored the inconvenient evidence on public record' and had resulted in a 'one-dimensional story' that could be dismissed as 'bleeding heart propaganda' and a 'cop-out'. (Age, 16 April 2005) Rayson replied several days later to 'Hyland's attack on my play'. She directed attention away from the factual record and pointed out that she had written a 'political thriller' that clearly signalled to the audience that 'we have leapt into fiction'. Rayson also asserted that 'the naval officer [son of the Homeland Security Minister and serving officer on the Kelepasan] is the moral heart of this play', not the contrasting ideologies of the two brothers upon whom much of the media attention has fallen. (Age, 19 April 2005)

Meanwhile another Age reviewer, Owen Richardson, had weighed into the debate with his view that 'Two Brothers' 'succeeds neither as a piece of dramatic writing nor as a contribution to debate.' He suggested that audiences would leave the theatre feeling 'antagonised and dimly condescended to ... by the childishness of [Rayson's] notion of modern right-wing politicians as moustache-twirling Dickensian fiends.' (Age, 17 April 2005)

Rayson's hope that the play 'energises the audience to ask questions about the real world' seems to have been realised in the reactions of the critics. 'Two Brothers' has now completed its Melbourne season and is showing in Sydney at the Opera House Drama Theatre until 2 July. From there it will tour nationally.

Further reaction to the play, from various political viewpoints, can be found on the following sites:

• SIEVX (follow the links from the home page)

and

• World Socialist website

One Book One Brisbane Novel Selected
The city of Brisbane has this year avoided the controversy that surrounded the 2004 One Book One Brisbane campaign (see Two Books One Brisbane in 2004) and has chosen Kimberley Starr's The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies as its single winning title for 2005. The campaign runs from 18 July – 19 August and seeks to operate as 'a book club that involves a whole city'. Over the five-week period Brisbane's Council and citizens will sponsor 'author talks and workshops, book discussions, book readings, walking tours, storytimes at libraries and an interactive program for schools.'

Starr's novel has previously won the 2003 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Best Manuscript of an Emerging Queensland Author. It features psychologist Madeleine Jeffries returning to her hometown of Brisbane to investigate a series of disappearances along the Brisbane River. Connections between the cases, some stretching back twenty years, draw Jeffries into her past and its secrets. The book explores 'grief, responsibility and repercussions and the way childhood actions can echo throughout our lives.'

The One Book One Brisbane website will be regularly updated in coming weeks to list events and activities for the reading campaign. The site also details other titles nominated for the 2005 campaign.

Books Alive Campaign Changes Strategy
Books Alive, an Australian government campaign to counter the effects of the GST on book sales, has changed its promotional thrust for 2005. Instead of offering $5 copies of books by six Australian authors, Books Alive has commissioned a novella from popular thriller writer Matthew Reilly. Reilly's Hell Island will be given free to anyone who buys a book from the Books Alive Great Read Guide. The Guide encountered some criticism in 2004 due to the poor representation of Australian writers. This year half the titles will be by Australians. The Guide will be distributed through the August issue of the Australian Women's Weekly and via bookshops and public venues.

Sandra Yates, chair of Books Alive, says the aim of the Guide is to 'simplify the world of books [...] Faced with an overwhelming range in book stores, the Guide will inform and empower occasional readers to make more satisfying reading choices.' (Books Alive News, 12 March 2005) The list of books will be largely decided by a panel whose members include writers and presenters from the media world of magazine, newspaper, radio and television. The list will be announced in July 2005.

Influence Breaks House Record in Sydney
Influence, possibly David Williamson's final play, has broken box office records in its run at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. Selling over 31,000 tickets, the play grossed more than $1.5 million in its eight-week premiere season and has been booked for a limited return season in August after tours to Adelaide, Newcastle and Melbourne. Sydney Theatre Company's Artistic Director, Robin Nevin, congratulated Williamson saying 'If it is his farewell play as he continues to claim, then it is a fitting farewell and a great personal tribute to him.' (State of the Arts News, 5 May 2005)

Success for Griffin Theatre with Playwrights' Residency
Griffin Theatre's inaugural Playwrights' Residency has generated two plays for the Sydney company's 2005 playbill. Five young playwrights were last year selected to come under Griffin's umbrella for a twelve-month period of professional development. David Berthold, artistic director for Griffin, said 'the project was at the heart of Griffin's mission as the only professional theatre company entirely devoted to the development and production of new Australian plays.' (State of the Arts News, 24 May 2005) The two plays included in the 2005 season are Tommy Murphy's 'Strangers In Between', performed in February-March and Caleb Lewis's 'Nailed'. The latter work will premiere on 14 July 2005 for a three-week season.

Applications for the 2005-2006 Residency close on 27 June 2005. Enquiries can be directed to:
The Literary Manager, Griffin Theatre Company, 13 Craigend St, Kings Cross, NSW 2011
or
literary@griffintheatre.com.au

Updates on stories covered in previous AustLit newsletters:

Film Producers Seek Inspiration between the Covers (November-December 2004) —
Late in 2004 the AustLit newsletter reported on the planned filming of Jocelyn Moorhouse's adaptation of Murray Bail's Eucalyptus. The film was due to begin production in Australia in February 2005. However, amid much media-generated intrigue, it was postponed due to 'unresolved script problems'. A more successful outcome awaited the adaptation of Luke Davies's Candy. The novel was adapted by Davies and director Neil Armfield and is now in post-production. The film stars Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish and Geoffrey Rush and could be in cinemas by the end of 2005.

Other projects emanating from literary works are also underway. Richard Roxburgh is planning a production of Raimond Gaita's Romulus, My Father with Eric Bana in the lead role, and Pip Karmel has just completed a film script for Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders. And after several abortive attempts, Patrick White's Voss is headed for the big screen nearly 50 years after its original publication. American independent filmmaker, Stuart Cooper, has written the script and is 'deep in the casting arena now'. Acknowledging the challenges of adapting White's novel, Cooper says 'Of course it's difficult, no question, but all the clues are there. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, so much so that I gave up worrying about other writers doing it and sat down and did the current screenplay myself. In the end, it made it easier.' White's literary executor, Barbara Mobbs, is reserving her judgment on the project although she suspects that whatever comes out of the characters' mouths will sound 'fabulously corny.' (Weekend Australian Magazine, 23-24 April 2005)

Consternation over Sale of Patrick White's Home (November-December 2004) —
While one of White's novels is about to take on new life in the film arena, his Sydney home is also preparing for a new lease on life. Despite protracted negotiations between the National Trust and various levels of Australian government, no agreement was reached on obtaining the property as part of the national estate. After failing to sell at auction, the Centennial Park house shared by White and his partner Manoly Lascaris was sold to a private buyer in late April 2005. Funds generated from the sale will now be dispersed between White's nominated beneficiaries: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Smith Family, the Aboriginal Education Council, and the National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association.

Jones's Name Up in Lights Again in WA
Gail Jones has won both the Fiction and Premier's prizes in the 2004 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. The judges for the 2004 awards, announced on 20 May 2005, described Jones's Sixty Lights as 'meticulous, elegant and engrossing'. It is the fourth win for Jones in the WA awards and the second time she has taken out both the Fiction and overall prizes. (In 1997 her collection of short stories, Fetish Lives, won the two awards.) Shortlisted alongside Jones were two other WA identities, Philip Salom (for Toccata and Rain) and Tim Winton (for The Turning).

In other categories, Miriam Wei Wei Lo's Against Certain Capture won the Poetry award, Joanne Crawford and Grace Fielding won the Children's Books prize for A Home for Bilby, and Jolly Read won the Script award for Yandy. Yandy, written in collaboration with Nyamal elder and lawman, Peter Coppin (Kangkushot), tells the story of the 1946 station-workers' strike in the Pilbara. The play throws light on the involvement of prospector Don McLeod and young journalist Dorothy Hewett. Yandy was described by the judges as a 'dramatic illustration of how the master-slave relationship is ruptured when the slave says No'. Read's account is not the first literary treatment inspired by the conflict. In 1959 Donald Stuart published his version – the documentary novel, Yandy. Earlier still, Geoffrey Bolton wrote of the conflict in 'The Macleod Affair' for the Winthrop Review (vol.1 no.1 June 1953). Peter Coppin's account of his role in the strike was presented on the ABC television programme Message Stick on 1 April 2005. A transcript can be read on Message Stick's website.

A full list of the WA Premier's Book Award winners can be viewed on the State Library of Western Australia's website.

Poetry the Major Winner at the NSW Premier's Awards
Sam Wagan Watson's Smoke Encrypted Whispers won both the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Book of the Year Award at the 2005 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. The two awards for younger readers also went to works in verse form. Steven Herrick won the Ethel Turner Prize for By the River and the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Books went to Sherryl Clark's Farm Kid.

In their report on Smoke Encrypted Whispers, the judges said 'This is poetry that speaks with a new voice from a younger generation of Australian poets. It is distinctive and passionate in its zest for life and in its sheer joy of poetry [...] Throughout the volume, the value of place, community and family is emphasized, especially in its absence [...] The significance of Wagan Watson's work in Smoke Encrypted Whispers is in its many levels of engagement: it presents a political and ethical voice which is exciting and moving. This is inspiring work in current Australian writing.'

Anita Heiss, who reviewed Watson's collection in 2004 and commended it from the vantage-point of an Indigenous writer, agreed. 'Much Indigenous poetry is written and indeed read because of what it has to say (rather than how it is written), because it provides the political voice that Indigenous people are denied in other areas of Australian society. Watson's writing is different though. He has mastered the craft of writing and also says what he needs to say as a blackfella.' (Australian Humanities Review, August-October 2004)

Other 2005 winners include:

• John Hughes, The Idea of Home (Douglas Stewart Prize)
• Katherine Thomson, Harbour (Play Award)
• Tim Winton, The Turning (Christina Stead Prize for Fiction)

and

• Ruby Langford Ginibi (Special Award)

The 2005 awards were presented by the Hon. Bob Carr MP, NSW Premier and Minister for the Arts, during a dinner at Parliament House. In her address to the gathering (read by Susan Ryan) Amanda Lohrey argued the case for secular liberal democracies and concluded by suggesting that writers can play a part in the creation and health of such a society: 'Writers speculate constantly as to the nature of reality and the dimensions of the possible. They are contrary, individualistic and tend to the sceptical. They hold every story that was ever told up to the light and test it against the truth of their own experience. In the process, they help to keep the liberal imagination alive.'

The full text of Lohrey's address, and details of all the awards and the judges' comments, can be found on the NSW Ministry for the Arts website.

Third Major Award for De Kretser
Michelle de Kretser has won another award for her historical novel, The Hamilton Case. With the Encore Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book in the South East Asia and South Pacific Region already to her credit, de Kretser has now added the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize. The Hamilton Case impressed the judges with 'its rich array of fascinating characters, the complex interweaving of themes and, above all, its utterly original use of the English language – both subtle and flamboyant, fresh and respectful of literary tradition.' (Arts Tasmania website)

Judged in 2005 by Robert Dessaix, Elspeth Sandys and Nick Drayson, the $40,000 prize is awarded biennially for the best novel written by a resident or citizen of Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia or Polynesia. Over 100 entries were submitted for this year's award. Members of the public were invited to choose their favourite from the shortlisted works and selected Alex Miller's Journey to the Stone Country.

Further information on the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize can be found on the Arts Tasmania website.

Five Young Writers Honoured
The judges have announced their verdict in the Sydney Morning Herald's 2005 Best Young Australian Novelist Award. (Sydney Morning Herald, 28-29 May 2005) This year's recipients are:

• Leigh Redhead ('a refreshingly sharp eye and a great sense of humour') for Peepshow
• Nicholas Angel ('a relaxed, unforced writer, who tells a well-paced story') for his Vogel-winning Drown Them in the Sea
• Craig Silvey (showing 'amazing maturity and confidence') for Rhubarb
• Andrew Humphreys for Wonderful ('a truly wonderful homage to 1930s LA and the B-movie')

and

• Corrie Hosking for Ash Rain (whose main character goes through 'a process of emotional awakening that is illustrated subtly and skillfully')

Speech Pathology Award to Paul Jennings
Children's writer Paul Jennings has won the inaugural Children's Language and Literacy Achievement Award offered by Speech Pathology Australia. A speech pathologist himself Jennings acknowledged the influence of his training on his writing. 'It's useful for me in understanding the language used in children's books and how it works. I write to make [books] easier to read.' (Canberra Times, 31 May 2005)

Receipt of the award coincided with the launch of Jennings's latest book, the semi-autobiographical How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare, Robbed a Grave, Made a New Friend Who Might Not Have Really Been There at All, and While He was At It Committed a Terrible Sin Which Everyone was Doing Even Though He Didn't Know It. Jennings's next project is his first novel for an adult audience.

Baylebridge Prize to University of Sydney Lecturer
Noel Rowe, senior lecturer in Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, has won the William Baylebridge Memorial Prize for his collection of poems, Next To Nothing. The prize honours the memory of the poet William Baylebridge and is awarded for a first collection by an Australian poet. Rowe will be one of about 30 guest poets at the 36th Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam in June 2005.

Miles Franklin Shortlist
The shortlist for the 2005 Miles Franklin Literary Award features two books published by Allen & Unwin, two by Vintage (Random House Australia) and one from HarperCollins. Four of the novels are firmly embedded in the Australian landscape, self-evidently fulfilling the award's criterion of 'portraying some aspects of Australian life'. The fifth is Gail Jones's Sixty Lights featuring Australian-orphan Lucy Strange who is raised in London and then sent to India for an arranged marriage.

The full shortlist is:

• Salt Rain by Sarah Armstrong
• Sixty Lights by Gail Jones
• The Gift of Speed by Steven Carroll
• The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood

and

• The White Earth by Andrew McGahan

The winner will be announced by Gillian Armstrong at the State Library of New South Wales on Thursday, 23 June. Last year's winner, Shirley Hazzard, will be among those in attendance for the presentation of the award.

Nature Writing Poised to Flourish
'There is a kind of literature that practises – that essays – ecological imagination. It is the literature of place; it is nature writing; and it is practised at its best, and mostly in essays, by North American writers, following Henry David Thoreau. In my native Australia, we latecomers, we Europeans, have not managed much ecological imagination yet; we have only rarely found a way to catch the lyric of the country itself in works of literature. We have not composed a literature of place in which the Australian geographies sing.'

With these words Mark Tredinnick begins his 2003 PhD thesis titled 'Writing the Wild: Place, Prose & the Ecological Imagination'. Tredinnick, a former book publisher, is passionate about the writing and teaching of the twin themes of the ecology and literature of Australia. Tredinnick does not dismiss the existing tradition in Australian nature writing, but longs for it to extend from poetry into prose. As co-editor of Southerly vol.64 no.2 in late 2004 he says: 'There have always been some, among the colonisers ... who have allowed the land to take possession of them, their bodies and their words' and cites Eric Rolls and Judith Wright as two eminent examples. Tredinnick continues, 'The expressiveness of country that began to sound out of our poetry in the 1960s has been slower in reaching our prose.' (p.6)

That picture may change in coming years. A range of events, associations and awards has recently sprung up to nurture and recognize nature writing in Australia. In October 2003 the first Watermark Literary Muster was held in the Camden Haven area of the New South Wales mid-north coast. (Henry Kendall lived in this area in the late 1870s after a tragic period in his personal life and, during World War II, Kylie Tennant also spent time in the region.) Watermark had its genesis in the home and friendships of Elaine van Kempen and Eric Rolls. When a critical mass of like-minded people coalesced, the Watermark Literary Society was formed 'to celebrate the literature of nature and place' and a biennial Muster inaugurated to bring together writers from Australia and overseas to share work, exchange ideas and to 'explore the role literature plays in environmental understanding'. The Muster will be held again in October 2005. More information about this year's event can be found on AustLit's Events Directory or on the Society's website.

Born out of the first Muster was the Australia-New Zealand chapter of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE-ANZ). ASLE-ANZ aims to 'share information and ideas and to encourage writing and discussion about literature and the environment, and the relationship between them.' It also hopes to 'encourage environmentally oriented, nature-literate, place-based writing in Australia and New Zealand; and to nurture ecologically informed scholarship of literature and other cultural creations.' Details of the Association and applications for membership are available on the ASLE-ANZ website.

In Tasmania, Wildcare and the Hobart City Council have sponsored a new award to recognise nature writing. The 2005 major prize has just been awarded to Mark Tredinnick, and Dael Allison and Adrienne Eberhard received the minor prizes. The winning entries will be published shortly in Wildcare's newsletter, Wildtimes and will be available online. In the field of children's literature, the Wilderness Society sponsors the Annual Environmental Award for Children's Literature. The award honours 'books that best encourage an attitude of caring, wonder and understanding of the natural world, or those that promote an awareness of environmental issues.'

One step removed from nature writing is the work of ecocriticism. Australian Humanities Review (AHR) is maintaining an online archive of articles surrounding the concerns of the 'ecological humanities'. Launching the list in April 2004, Deborah Bird Rose espoused the value of connectivity and dialogue between people working in ecological humanities and invited submissions. Items received to date are available via AHR's website.

To explore this genre of Australian writing further, recent publications featuring nature writing, or discussions of the issues surrounding it, include:

• The literary magazines:
  Southerly vol.63 no.2, 2004
  and
  Island no.100, Autumn 2005
• The anthology:
  A Place on Earth : An Anthology of Nature Writing from Australia and North America (2003)

and

• Soon to be published:
  Mark Tredinnick's PhD thesis, 'Writing the Wild' (late 2005). (The thesis is currently available online through the Australian Digital Theses Program via this link
  and
  Colloquy will publish the papers of the inaugural Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE-ANZ) conference held in March-April this year under the theme 'Be True to the Earth'.

New Journal of Politics, Society and the Arts Arrives
Morry Schwartz, publisher of Black Inc. books and Quarterly Essay has added a magazine to his list of publications. The first issue of The Monthly appeared in May 2005. It includes essays, reviews, letters, comment on national affairs and short fiction. Included in the 'Books' section is an article by Malcolm Knox titled 'TheExFactor' on the death of the Australian novelist.

Knox examines the impact of the Nielsen BookScan on the publishing careers of literary novelists. Having suggested that the weekly Scan operates much like a scoreboard in the spectator sport of book sales, Knox concludes that BookScan is ultimately neither the villain nor the hero. 'It is a cipher for the people who buy books' and reflects a current reading trend – 'a mass retreat from risk'. Knox fears for writers with the potential to become a future Thea Astley or David Malouf. 'They are suffering the judgement of a changing world that wants to read for escape rather than transcendence, for relaxation rather than exercise, and whose principle for choosing what to read is to look around the train carriage and say: "I'll have what he's having."'

The Myth of the Mainstream
Robyn Archer, espousing sentiments that Malcolm Knox may well share in light of his comments in The Monthly, accuses Australia and its leaders of a 'prejudice against the intellectual [and] a preference for pure entertainment' and declares those attitudes to be 'some of the consequences of falling for the myth of the mainstream.'

The Myth of the Mainstream : Politics and Performing Arts in Australia Today is the fourth in Currency House's Platform Papers series. The volume also includes responses to Julian Meyrick's Trapped by the Past: Why Our Theatre Is Facing Paralysis.

Two New Books to Celebrate the Career of T. A. G. Hungerford
Describing him as 'the last grand old man of Australian literature', UWA Press has just released a biography of T. A. G. Hungerford. According the publisher Michael Crouch's biography 'takes an in-depth look at Tom Hungerford the man, the archetypal bachelor of the post-war years. He represents the Australia of yesteryear, when the country still retained a certain innocence and his native Perth was just a big country town.'

Also marking his achievement of ninety years of life, over sixty of them as a writer, Hungerford has written a collection of stories and poems that illustrate his life. Published by Jacobyte Books, What Happened to Joseph? is available as an e-book in paperback form.

West Biography Analyses Writings More Closely than Writer
Even though he was one year younger than Hungerford, Morris West pre-deceased the WA writer by some six years. Maryanne Confoy has now published a biography of West titled Morris West : Literary Maverick. Reviewing the book, Barry Oakley says 'Confoy's Morris West is intelligent and perceptive, but it takes us closer to the books than to the man.' Oakley contests that the 'moral dilemmas West so skilfully explored – especially in The Shoes of the Fisherman, The Clowns of God and Lazarus, his papal trio – are analysed in depth, but [Confoy's] a reluctant literary critic and defensive of West's shortcomings as a writer.' (Australian, 16 April 2005)

Posthumous Collection of Beaver's Poems
The Long Game and Other Poems was published by the University of Queensland Press (UQP) two weeks prior to the first anniversary of Bruce Beaver's death. The poems, from the later period of Beaver's writing, 'meditate on death and destruction, loss and frailty, while remaining faithful to the promise of life and birth, regeneration and creativity.' (UQP)

Read On...
New pleasures await those who enjoy reading series or sequels:

• The fifteenth novel in Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher Mysteries is now available. In Death By Water, Fisher is called on to investigate a succession of jewellery thefts on board a passenger liner.
• The next title in Victor Kelleher's Goblin series will be released in August. Goblin in the Snow continues the humorous escapades of Gibblewort the horrible Irish goblin. On this occasion Gibblewort is sent on a winter holiday to Austria, but is mistakenly diverted to Australia.
• Paul Jennings has added four new titles to his Rascal Stories series this year. The new picture books are: Rascal and Little Flora, Rascal and the Cheese, Rascal and the Hot Air Balloon and Rascal at the Show.
• Following on from Au Revoir and Last Tango in Toulouse, comes Mary Moody's The Long Hot Summer. In the third instalment Moody is caught in rural southwest France during the 2003 heat wave that engulfed the European summer. The hot weather coincides with the meltdown of Moody's marriage.

and

• Mandy Sayer has published, in reverse chronological order, the prequel to her 1998 memoir, Dreamtime Alice. Sayer's new book, Velocity, tells the story of her childhood and adolescence. According to her publisher, Random House, Sayer's youth is 'a life lived on the edges – of society, of poverty, of certainty, of love.'

John Iremonger Award for Writing
Allen & Unwin is offering the second annual John Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues. The award is for non-fiction works of contemporary political, social and cultural commentary. The prize is '$10,000, guaranteed publication, royalties on sales and editorial support to develop the proposal to finished manuscript.'

Judges for 2005 will be senior Labor Party politician Dr Carmen Lawrence, journalist and freelance writer Matthew Ricketson and an Allen & Unwin publisher.

For further information and to download an official entry form, visit the Allen & Unwin website.

Le Simplegadi
Professor Antonella Riem Natale, Professor of English Literature at Udine University in Italy, is calling for submissions for the journal Le Simplegadi. Professor Natale, who studied at the University of Queensland in the 1980s writes: 'the third issue of Le Simplegadi will focus on modern languages and literatures from a multiplicity of viewpoints and in particular the issues raised by "hybridisation" by "moving" and nomadic subjects: migration, migrant writers, intercultural identity and subjectivity, post-colonial studies and subaltern studies.' The journal welcomes submissions 'focusing on these areas of interest and conforming to any of the four main sections in Le Simplegadi: articles, comments, book reviews and creative pieces of writing.' Submissions must comply with Le Simplegadi's guidelines, and abstracts should be provided in both Italian and English.

The deadline for submissions is 30 June 2005. Full details can be found on Le Simplegadi's website. Additionally, Professor Natale can be contacted via email: antonella.riem@uniud.it

Call for New Poetry from Les Murray
Les Murray is preparing the 2006 volume of Best Australian Poems. After taking over the job of editor in 2005 from Peter Craven, Murray is sourcing poetry himself, but is also calling for contributions to be sent to him. Sumbissions can be directed to:
Senior Editor, Black Inc., Level 5, 289 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Vic 3000

New Prizes To Be Announced at ASAL Conference
The winners of two new prizes will be announced at the 2005 conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL). The A. D. Hope Prize will be awarded for the best post-graduate paper from the 2004 conference, and the Magarey Prize for Biography (by a woman) will be inaugurated as a biennial award. Winners of the Gold Medal for Australian Literature and the Walter McRae Russell Award will also be announced.

This year's conference is to be held in Adelaide at the Art Gallery of South Australia and the State Library of South Australia from 3-6 July. Sneja Gunew will give the keynote address and Gail Jones will deliver the Dorothy Green Memorial Lecture. Full details are available on the ASAL Conference website.

Information on other conferences and literary events can be found on AustLit's Events Directory.

100 Issues of Tasmania's Island Magazine
The Autumn 2005 issue of Island is double-sized to celebrate the magazine's 100th appearance. Beginning life in 1979 as the Tasmanian Review, Island has maintained its resolve is to select and publish 'excellence and variety'. While aiming at 'a national readership' Island's editors have ensured that that focus has co-existed with a 'strong Tasmanian identity'. The first editors (1979-1990) were Michael Denholm and Andrew Sant. Editors since that time have included Cassandra Pybus, Rodney Croome and current editor, David Owen. To commemorate the 100-milestone, all of Island's 'past editors were invited to send in an essay of their choice, and, in the case of past poetry editors, recent work.' (Editorial, Island no.100, pp.5-6)

Andrew Sant contributed an essay on the experience of 'only children' and some of his poetry tied into this theme also. Michael Denholm wrote about the work of Tasmanian artist Geoff Dyer, and Rodney Croome related an incident involving a confrontation between himself and a group on intoxicated football players. Stephen Edgar, co-editor from 1990-1994 contributed his own poetry and a translation of Charles-Pierre Baudelaire. The issue also contains an essay by Margaret Scott, a previously unpublished screenplay by Richard Flanagan and 'twinned' stories from Marion Halligan and Carmel Bird that evolved from a telephone conversation between the two authors.

Percy Trezise 1923-2005
Artist, conservationist and writer Percy Trezise has died at Redlynch in far north Queensland. Trezise was well-known as a painter and photographer, and for his fight against wood-chipping in North Queensland rainforests in the mid-1970s. He was also responsible for bringing the extensive Quinkan Aboriginal rock art sites to public attention. Trezise spent many years photographing the sites and building strong relationships with the Aboriginal people of the Laura area on Cape York Peninsula. He developed a close friendship with fellow-painter Dick Roughsey and, in a traditional Aboriginal ceremony, became Roughsey's brother and was given the name 'Warrenby'. Often in partnership with his new brother, Trezise wrote and illustrated dozens of children's picture books, many of them themed around issues of conservation or Aboriginal mythology.

Trezise has been buried on his family property, Jowalbinna, near Laura.

Sara Henderson 1936-2005
Sara Henderson came to prominence in Australia when she resurrected her family's fortunes by profitably turning around the operation of Bullo, her deceased husband's Northern Territory property. As a result of that experience, Henderson wrote the first of her six books, From Strength to Strength. That book went on to win the 1993 Australian Booksellers Association Booksellers Choice Book of the Year Award. Henderson was also recognized as the Australian Business Woman of the Year in 1991.

Henderson wrote further of her life on Bullo and her experiences of running an outback property and providing for the well-being of the station staff. From the mid-1990s onwards, Henderson was the public face of BreastScreen Australia. She developed breast cancer herself and, after a period of remission, was diagnosed with a secondary cancer.

At the time of her death Henderson was working on a book about breast cancer. Her publisher at Pan Macmillan, James Fraser, was uncertain how much of the manuscript had been completed. Fraser concluded a homage to Henderson with her own words: 'Don't wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel. Stride down there ... and light the bloody thing yourself.' (Pan Macmillan website)

Richard Deutsch 1944-2005
Veronica Sumegi of Brandl & Schlesinger has announced the death of American-born poet, Richard Deutch. Deutch grew up in Illinois and graduated from Bard College. His poetry was published in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom and he also wrote in the areas of the occult and magic. Deutch's collection Heart with Piano Wire, was shortlisted for the 2001 Dinny O'Hearn Poetry Prize and won an American poetry prize offered by the Bright Hill Press.

Shelton Lea 1946-2005
Melbourne poet Shelton Lea discovered poetry while serving gaol sentences. He wrote that poetry allowed him to 'live for several years inside/ because it altered my point of view'. ('Doing Times', 1985) After his release from prison, Lea became active in the campaign to lower the minimum age for the incarceration of teenagers. He also traveled around Australia, building relationships with Aboriginal communities as he went. (Lea's poems about Aboriginal/white relations in Australia are collected in Totems.)

Lea was part of the Heide set, worked with Barrett Reid on Overland and founded the Eaglemont Press in Clifton Hill. He was well-known as a performance poet in schools, prisons, pubs and other venues. In her obituary of Lea, Gig Ryan recalls that 'his frank interjections at poetry readings unsettled some, but invigorated others who enjoyed his declamatory style, his joie de vivre and subtle social comment...' (Age, 13 May 2005)

Lea was diagnosed with lung cancer in February 2005 and died in May, shortly after the publication of his final poetry collection – Nebuchadnezzar.

Writers of Tropical Queensland Launched
On 6 May at James Cook University (JCU) Library the newest AustLit subset, Writers of Tropical Queensland(WTQ), was launched by AustLit's Executive Manager, Kerry Kilner. This is an extract from her speech to the audience.

'Writers of Tropical Queensland has been compiled by Dr Cheryl Taylor from the School of Humanities at JCU, with the assistance of Dr Ben Myers. It is based on research undertaken over many years by Dr Taylor and her colleague, the late Ross Smith. The bibliography covers the full gamut of the creative writing genres, plus travel and life writing, articles, essays, reviews and literary criticism. It is a fully searchable subset of AustLit records which have been identified as relating to the writing and writers associated with tropical Queensland from the 1860s to the present.

'Launch events such as this one usually signify the culmination of long-term research where someone with a passion for a particular subject has finally published a reference work containing a static body of knowledge. However, while the publication of the WTQ bibliography does mark the achievement and release of a remarkable body of knowledge, the format and usefulness of this work is unlike previously published reference works. This publication represents an exciting new way of creating and disseminating specialist and generalist reference works such as bibliographies and dictionaries of biography. It ensures that they will not remain static, but can evolve over time to become even more valuable than at the point of publication.

'As research continues through the AustLit program and more discoveries are made about the writers and writing from the region of Australia, which Dr Taylor has identified as 'north of the tropic of Capricorn', the deeper and broader the bibliography will become and an increasingly complex and nuanced picture of that region of Australia will be built up. So the formal launch of the WTQ does not mark an arrival or end point but an important step along a journey where no end need ever be reached.

'Because the bibliography is delivered through AustLit in a fully searchable format, it will be possible to know, for instance, how many writers from the region have written about Townsville or used the Torres Strait as a setting for their creative writing. And because the bibliography covers both creative writing and a wide range of non-fiction and scholarly writing, it will be possible to explore the ways that the region is written for local consumption in the newspapers and journals that represent it and engage with issues of concern to the north.

'Through this bibliography many stories from the region - ranging through ancient Indigenous stories, explorer and colonist journals and contemporary short stories, novels and poetry - will be shared with the wider world for the first time and the creativity, diversity and productivity of Tropical Queensland writers can be assessed, measured and analysed in ways that have not before been possible. It will assist scholars to make new discoveries about the cultural life of the region and thereby arrive at new understandings of the contribution to our national literature that writers from northern Queensland have made. And because it records the peripatetic nature of the lives of many Australians it will track the movement of writers from other parts of Australia through that region. Some of Australia's most respected and influential writers have either lived or spent time in the North – writers such as Vance and Nettie Palmer, Jean Devanny, Randolf Bedford, Ernest Favenc, Ernestine Hill, Louis Becke, Xavier Herbert and the gorgeously named, Lala Fisher.

'Dr Taylor's approach to AustLit in October 2002 to become a partner in this special research project has borne fruit through this publication. It has also set a benchmark for the ways that collaboration between AustLit and the wider scholarly community can occur. The AustLit Board and the Management team welcome the opportunity to see AustLit serve multiple purposes – as a repository for information from which knowledge can be harvested and as a repository to which specialists can contribute.

'The quality of work produced for this bibliography both by Dr Taylor and Dr Myers (who now works for AustLit at The University of Queensland) has been of a very high standard. The rigours of bibliographical accuracy have been brought to every record created or altered within AustLit so that dependable and authoritative information is delivered to our users – the researchers and scholars who have come to rely on AustLit for the best of information.

'The launch the Writers of Tropical Queensland bibliography signifies both a celebration of the publication and also the maturing of an association with James Cook University into what will hopefully be a long term partnership to extend this bibliography further and collaborate on other aspects of the literary and cultural heritage of the North.'

AustLit subscribers can search the subset and read Dr Taylor's comprehensive Introduction here.

Children's Fiction – A Simpler Approach
At AustLit we pride ourselves on constant review of our work practices and service delivery. Now, after more than three years of operation, we've come to the conclusion that children's fiction should be handled in a simpler and different way from fiction for adults and young adults.

AustLit indexes literary works by assigning work types, work forms, work genres and subject concepts to all works and while the form terms 'Poetry', 'Drama' and 'Picture Book' are useful and meaningful when applied to creative literature for children, the terms novel, novella and short story can be ambiguous and unhelpful – fiction for children varies so much in length and character and often doesn't fit these specific categories.

In relation to children's literature only, AustLit will soon be replacing the categories novel, novella and short story with one form, 'Children's fiction'. The change will be comprehensive and retrospective. We hope it will make searching simpler and indexing more consistent and allow for better access to the exciting world of Australian children's writing.

Children's writing and writers will continue to be searchable on AustLit via the entire contents of the database or through the dedicated Australian Children's Literature subset.

New AustLit Records
During April and May 2005, the Content Development Team added:

• 4,971 new works
• 1,014 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, over 8,000 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.