AustLit has implemented a number of new services since the beginning of 2002.

• A new Works Updated option on the AustLit homepage provides a dynamic link to recent additions to the Gateway.
• The new Author Browse search allows Subscribers and non-subscribers to see information on about 1 500 authors (of the total 60 000 authors on AustLit). The list facilitates browsing by author surname.
• A new dynamic Australian Literary Archives Search is now available. AustLit subscribers can launch targeted searches for author archives from AustLit's author pages to the National Library's RAAM (Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts), and the University of Western Australia's Guide to Australian Literary Manuscripts. Non-subscribers can use our archives page as an access point to these excellent free services.
• A citation filter for users of the EndNote bibliographic package. See our information and instructions for downloading EndNote.
• New customisable sorting of results sets - you can now re-sort by Date, Title, Book or Electronic resource. Date will return results in descending first known publication date order. Title returns results alphabetically by title; Book will return the separately published works (eg. books and journals); Electronic resource returns works which are available in electronic form.

Reported in the Weekend Herald [Auckland] 16-17 February 2002, New Zealand author Elspeth Sandys will soon visit Melbourne to workshop a stage play she has written about Australian novelist Martin Boyd. Sandys is also involved in a joint venture between the BBC and the ABC, to write a three-part serial adaptation of a Boyd novel. Sandys will again visit Australia in May when she participates in the Sydney Writers' Festival.

Booker Prize winning South African author, J. M. Coetzee, has taken up residence in Adelaide.

Nicholas Hasluck has now completed his three year term as Chair of the Literature Board. His successor is the poet, novelist, essayist and librettist Peter Goldsworthy.

Judith Rodriguez has been elected to the Board of International PEN (an abbreviation for Poets, Essayists and Novelists), a body representing the world membership of PEN across nearly 150 Centres.

On 23 January Anne Pender (currently lecturing at The Menzies Centre for Australian Studies) launched the UK edition of Frank Moorhouse's Dark Palace at the Australian High Commission in London. Dark Palace is the sequel to Grand Days and continues the story of the fate of the League of Nations in the build up to World War II. At the launch Moorhouse told guests about the highs and lows of his eleven years of research for the two novels, spent mainly in Switzerland, the USA and Australia. Dark Palace won the Miles Franklin Award in 2001.

Keith Dunstan was the sole recipient with any literary connection of an Order of Australia Honour. Dunstan was awarded the Order of Australia, Medal (OAM) in the General Division, 2002 for service as a journalist and author, and to the community, particularly as a supporter of the Berry Street Babies Home.

Garry Disher won the Deutsche Krimi Preis, International, 2002 for The Dragon Man. This is the second time that Disher has won the prize having previously won in 2000 for Kickback.

Cathy Cole, a PhD student at UTS has been awarded a Keesing Studio Writer's Residency for 2002. She received the residency for 6 months beginning on 1 August 2002. The award was granted to spend time working on her Hanoi novel and exploring how contemporary French politics are finding their way into French popular culture and fiction, including crime fiction.

Judy Johnson won the Josephine Ulrick National Poetry Prize for 2002 for her poem The African Spider Cures.

Winners of the South-East Asia and South Pacific Region section of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for 2002 have been announced. This year's Australian winners are:

• Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan (Best Book)
• In the Blue House by Meaghan Delahunt (First Work of Fiction)

The overall prize for 2002 will be announced in Edinburgh, Scotland in April.

Winners in this year's Festival Awards for Literature (SA) are:

• National Award for Children's Writing - Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr by Garth Nix
• Dymocks Booksellers National Fiction Award (Inaugural award) and The SA Premier's Literary Award - The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
• National Award for Innovation in Writing (Inaugural award) - Tiger's Eye by Inga Clendinnen
• Mayne Award for Multimedia - Poems in a Flash @ The Stalking Tongue Website by Jane Fenton Keane & David Keane and Juvenate by Michelle Glaser, Andrew Hutchinson & Marie Louise Xavier
• The National Award for Non-Fiction - Leviathan: The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney by John Birmingham
• The National John Bray Poetry Prize - Around Here by Cath Kenneally
• Award for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging SA Writer (Inaugural award, manuscript to be published by Wakefield Press) - The Black Dream by Corrie Hosking
• The Jill Blewett Playwright's Award for the Development of a Play Script by a SA Emerging Writer - Small Faith by Joshua Tyler
• The Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship was awarded to Graham Rowlands
• The Carclew Fellowship was awarded to Ruth Starke

Controversy has surrounded the Australian premiere of Australian Rules, the film adaptation of Phillip Gwynne's novel Deadly Unna?. Protesters against the screening of the film at the Adelaide Festival have formed the Coalition Against Deadly Unna. After failing to convince Festival Director Sue Nattrass to withdraw the film, the Coalition's members promised to mount a campaign seeking an injunction to stop the film from being shown.

Many excellent Australian literature websites are created by individuals or small organisations. Please be patient with download times, and try again if you have difficulty accessing these services.

Visit the joint site of Australian poets Les Murray and Mark O'Connor, Australianpoet.com . Murray's component points to some of the more useful sites among the 250+ sites that deal with him and his work. O'Connor's pages include a record of his activities as Sydney 2000 Olympic Poet.

Hugh Capel has recently mounted a website honouring the life and work of Barcroft Boake. The site, titled simply Henry Barcroft Boake, features 21 of Boake's poems, some biographical material and family photographs. (Capel has also written a biographical novel Where Dead Men Lie : The Story of Barcroft Boake, Bush Poet of the Monaro : 1866-1892 on the poet's life.)

Other Australian poets have mounted their websites through the auspices of the The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Web of Poets. For a sample, visit the following authors' homepages: Dorothy Porter, J. S. Harry and Lisa Bellear.

Jean Penna West died in Adelaide on 13 December 2001. Penna spent her childhood years in the Bendigo district before beginning work as a governess at the age of 15. Penna married in 1930, living much of her married life with her husband Bob in Adelaide. In the early 1940s Penna began writing and had her first short story published in 1945. In all she had over 100 stories and articles published and won a number of literary prizes. Penna's poetry was published in the Victorian Poetry Society Magazine, the Western Mail and The Canberra Times. Penna was a member of the Society of Women Writers and the Kensington Park Writers' Group.

Widely regarded as one of Australia's most distinguished writers of children's books Elyne Mitchell died in Corryong Hospital on 4 March 2002. Mitchell wrote for over sixty years, her most enduring works being the Silver Brumby Series which traced the adventures of the wild horses of the Australian Alps. Mitchell's works have been published in over forty countries and translations of her books are numerous, particularly into Dutch and Swedish. In addition to her novels, Mitchell wrote screenplays, poetry and non-fiction works all featuring Australia's "high country". In 1983, Mitchell published a history of her family Chauvel Country : The Story of a Great Australian Pioneering Family with particular reference to their life at Towong Hill Station. In 1989 she published her autobiography Towong Hill, Fifty Years On an Upper Murray Cattle Station.

Joan Ambrose's radio play Maia was broadcast on 20 January 2002 as part of Worldplay 4, the Fourth International Festival of Radio Drama. This 4th series of international drama was commissioned around the theme Life is Elsewhere and is heard by millions of people across the English-speaking world. Worldplay 4 is developed under the aegis of the Association for Radio Drama in English (ARDE), and includes plays from Canada, The United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the United States. Ambrose's play is a love story set in the wheatbelt of Western Australia.

Subscribe to update notifications by email when a new AustLit Newsletter goes online. This is an announcements-only list with very low volume: one short message every month. Under the AustLit Privacy Policy your email address will not be sold or given to any third party.

Subscribe by sending an email:

• To: majordomo@austlit.edu.au
• No Subject
• Body of the message: subscribe news on one line and end on the next line
• Strip all signature and other infomation
• You will be sent a request to authenticate your subscription to the list - follow the instructions provided.

We welcome your feedback on our new 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