AustLit Launches Events Directory Service
AustLit's new Events Directory Service is a free opportunity to publicise your upcoming event to the Australian literature, teaching and research communities locally and internationally. This new service allows easy submission of information about a wide variety of upcoming events including festivals, conferences and calls for papers, seminars, speaking tours, book launches, new releases, theatre events, new courses and many other events that could be of interest to AustLit users.

The Directory will be freely available from AustLit's homepage with the most imminent events displayed prominently on the front page. Each submission is assessed for relevance before being made available to the public.

Event organisers or participants can make submissions to the Directory via an easy to use Submission form.

AustLit Funding Enables Development of New WA Anthology
Professor Alan Robson, acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, recently launched Western Australian Writing: An On-line Anthology. Western Australian Writing enables access by a global audience to over 300 complete works and extracts from the longer works of almost 200 writers. Works include fiction, poetry, drama and essays, originally published between 1703 and the present day. Major writers represented in Western Australian Writing include Tim Winton, Elizabeth Jolley, Dorothy Hewett and Peter Cowan.

Western Australian Writing was edited by John Kinsella, the distinguished Western Australian poet, novelist, critic and editor who is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge; Professor of English at Kenyon College (Ohio); and an Adjunct Professor at Edith Cowan University.

Support for this innovative publication of Western Australian literary heritage was made possible as a part of the University of Western Australia's collaboration in the development of the AustLit Gateway. AustLit users will soon be able to move directly from citation within AustLit to the full text as hypertext links are enabled. Western Australian Writing can be accessed through the University of Western Australia Library website.

Out-of-Print Australian Classics Now Available On-Demand
In another innovation in the delivery of Australian literature in immediate electronic format 25 significant full length works are being re-published as part of the 'Classic Australian Works' publishing program using online ordering, print-on-demand production and direct delivery.

The 'Classic Australian Works' pilot project is using online technology to make available Australian classic literature that is out-of-print, but, in most cases, still-in-copyright. The project partners are the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), The University of Sydney, The Australian Society of Authors and the National Library of Australia.

Members of AustLit's Editorial Board, Professors Bruce Bennett and Elizabeth Webby and Associate Professor David Carter were influential in the selection of the list of works and once available AustLit users will be able to move seamlessly from the AustLit record to the text and ordering function.

The 25 books initially selected for the project have been digitally converted to enable publication using print-on-demand (POD) technology. Orders can be placed online and a print copy will be produced and delivered by post. The copyright owners will receive rights payments through CAL. These works will be available for general reading, study and inclusion on reading lists, and can be ordered online from December 2003 through Sydney University Press (SUP). 'Classic Australian Works' is being published as a specific project of the revived SUP. SUP is being developed as an e-publishing platform for Australian scholarly research and study, and the partnership with CAL in the 'Classic Australian Works' project has provided an opportunity to develop an innovative and flexible process of digital to print-on-demand production with web-based sale and distribution

Many of Australia's most influential authors are part of the 'Classic Australian Works' selection including:

• Jessica Anderson - The Impersonators
• Bruce Beaver - Letters to Live Poets
• Martin Boyd - Lucinda Brayford
• Rosa Cappiello - Oh Lucky Country
• Eleanor Dark - Lantana Lane
• David Ireland - The Glass Canoe
• Gerald Murnane - Inland
• Katharine Susannah Prichard - The Pioneers

and

• Henry Savery - Quintus Servinton

Jessica Anderson, Martin Boyd, Eleanor Dark and Gerald Murnane are represented on the list with multiple works.

AustLit News Tailored to Your Needs - Research Results Delivered to Your Desktop
Keep up-to-date with recent happenings in the Australian publishing world by signing up for AustLit's Personal Alert Service. This service allows you to request up to 10 different searches in areas that particularly interest you. The service regularly notifies you of newly added and updated AustLit records relevant to your search parameters.

Once the easy step-by-step Registration process is completed, you can nominate your areas of interest and choose weekly or monthly email updates.

New AustLit Records
During September-October 2003, the AustLit Content Development Team added:

• 5,999 new works
• 1,416 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, thousands of existing work and agent records have been significantly upgraded and enhanced.

User Survey
Please help AustLit improve its service to you by completing our User Survey. We really want to know more about you and your needs. Click here if you can spare a few minutes to help enhance AustLit.

Quiz Win by AustLit Content Manager
Congratulations to Carol Hetherington, winner of the Brisbane Writers' Festival 2003 Literary Quiz. With some of the 100 quiz questions based on Australian literature, Carol was in an excellent position to discover the answers by searching AustLit. Here is a sample of the questions solved with AustLit's aid (answers appear at the end of the Newsletter):

1. The Recruiting Officer was performed on Thursday 4th June 1789 by the convicts of the Penal Settlement, Sydney Cove. Who was the author who wrote a fictional account of that performance?
2. He is a barrister, and the author of Three Dollars, which won the Melbourne Age Book of the Year in 1998. Who is he?
3. He was born in Ipswich, Queensland, and after achieving great success with the publication of his first book assumed the pseudonym Harrison Biscuit for his second novel. What is his name?
4. The Miles Franklin Literary Award for 1964 was given to George Johnston for My Brother Jack. What was the title of the sequel?
5. Who was Ern Malley's sister?
6. What was the title which earned Peter Carey his first Miles Franklin Award?

Link to a full list of the questions via The Courier-Mail's website.

Survey Searches for Australia's Most Popular Book
The ABC, in conjunction with The Australian Society of Authors (ASA), has asked Australian readers to vote for their favourite Australian book, be it fiction or non-fiction. (Earlier this year when the ASA surveyed its own membership, Tim Winton's Cloudstreet topped the poll.) ABC radio listeners and users of ABC online were able to access a list of over 350 suggested titles and could also nominate additional favourite books.

Voting in the poll closed on 7 November and the result will be announced on 24 November. A list of the suggested titles, a guest book of voter comments, and notes from featured readers is available via ABC Online.

For more information on the original ASA poll see AustLit's July/August newsletter.

Linda Jaivin's Eat Me Banned in the USA
The public library in Marion County, Florida has withdrawn Linda Jaivin's Eat Me from its shelves. Following a complaint from an elderly client, Library Director Julie Sieg determined that Eat Me failed a collection-inclusion test on several counts - it was not written by a 'recognised or popular author', it could not be considered 'classic or well-written literature' and the storyline was not 'moved forward by the erotic elements within the book'.

By contrast, Jaivin's book will be published in a special format in the UK in 2004 and featured in a Vintage promotion of books with a theme of sexual love.

AustLit's record for Eat Me reveals that it has been translated into Italian, German, Portuguese and French. Some of these editions sold out and have been reprinted.

Ern Just Won't Go Away
The latest twist in the Ern Malley saga is the creation by artist Garry Shead of a series of paintings and pottery urns inspired by the fictitious poet's life. Having read the complete series of Angry Penguins issues some years ago, Shead told Angela Bennie (The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 October 2003) that he 'began thinking about the whole thing. I couldn't let it alone. It has become an obsession with me [...] I could see [Malley], I could see his dark eyes, I see him walking the streets, dark, melancholic. I began to identify with him.' The identification went so deep that Shead recently imagined a range of physical symptoms he experienced to be evidence of Graves' Disease - the ailment that purportedly led to Malley's death.

Shead's four large paintings and nine pottery urns (the latter created collaboratively with potter, Lino Alvarez) form an exhibition at Australian Galleries in Sydney under the title The Apotheosis of Ern Malley. The exhibition runs until 21 November.

End of an Era for La Boite
Brisbane's La Boite Theatre has held its final performance at the company's Hale Street premises. After 36 years at the site, La Boite will move to new headquarters at the Queensland University of Technology's Kelvin Grove campus. 2004 productions will include adaptations of two novels by Queenslanders - Nick Earls' Zigzag Street and Rosamund Siemon's The Mayne Inheritance.

Australian Theatre on the International Stage
Several Australian plays make their international stage debuts in late 2003:

• Stephen Sewell's Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America was read in New York in early October as part of a Theaters Against War event. Sewell wrote the play in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and during the build-up to the Iraq War. Sewell told the Australian socialist magazine, Green Left Weekly, that 'it is absolutely critical that every writer does everything they can to protect and extend democracy at this time of great danger. As a writer, I am absolutely affected by these assaults on democracy.'
  (Sewell's play was also broadcast on ABC Radio National's Airplay over four Sundays in October.)
  
• Ben Ellis's Falling Petals has been selected for a presentation in New York in late 2003 with the New Dramatists. The reading forms part of a three-week exchange between the New Dramatists and the Australian National Playwrights' Centre (ANPC). Ellis's allegorical play addresses several dichotomies - rural/urban, young/old, health/illness - combining anger and satire in a science fiction setting.
• Matt Cameron's Ruby Moon is scheduled for performance in Shanghai in December. Described by Currency Press as a 'fractured fairytale from the dead heart of suburbia', Ruby Moon tracks a couple's obsessed search for their missing daughter.

Indigenous Protocols Guides Released
Writers, performers, musicians and artists now have a readily available reference point when planning a work involving indigenous peoples or cultures. In an initiative of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board (ATSIAB) (under the auspices of the Australia Council), indigenous lawyers have produced five new guides. One of the guides, Writing Cultures, takes writers through sensitive issues such as research, confidentiality, consent and copyright.

Books Alive Success
National bestseller lists were dominated by Books Alive titles during August. Total book sales were 23% higher during the two-week campaign than in the same period in 2002 (including an increase in retail sales for books not included in the Books Alive promotion). 286,000 copies of the six promotional titles were printed. An Anzac's Story, a previously unpublished memoir by Roy Kyle, topped the bestseller list for both weeks of the campaign.

Books Alive is an Australian Government initiative aimed at promoting reading as an enjoyable leisure activity while simultaneously producing beneficial results for the book industry.

Writers See Identities Revealed in Football Codes
'The Poms are formed by the empire and I hope they die by the empire', Thomas Keneally recently told Roy Masters (The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October). Keneally, well known for his pro-republican stance, was commenting on the traits exhibited by national teams during the Rugby Union World Cup being played in Australia during October and November. Keneally said the English play 'like the British Empire. They can be Wellington fighting Napoleon's forces with a brilliant match plan on the Hispanic peninsula but they can also play grudgingly like the Black and Tans, smashing through the natives of Ireland and India.'

Comparing team characteristics among Australian Football League sides, David Williamson wrote that when Australian Rules was formalised in Victoria in the early twentieth century, 'everybody knew who and what their team represented' (The Age, 27 September). Recalling his own origins as a 'Collingwood tragic' (Williamson is now the number 2 ticket holder at the Sydney Swans), Williamson stated that Collingwood's traditionally working class teams knew that 'the only avenue to respect was not just to win but to annihilate. And they did, any which way.'

Regretful Writer Wins Booker
Peter Finlay, the Australian-born, Mexican-raised, Irish resident, has won the 2003 Booker Prize. Writing under the pseudonym D. B. C. (Dirty But Clean) Pierre, Vernon God Little is Finlay's first novel. It tells the darkly comic story of a 15 year-old Texan youth charged with the massacre of 16 students at his small town high school.

Finlay's past attracted at least as much attention from the media as his award-winning novel. Following the announcement of the prize, British newspapers were consumed with Finlay's youthful drug-taking, reckless driving, womanising and property swindling. Finlay himself recognised that his 'youth was an incredibly deviated and misenergetic affair' and acknowledged that 'if there's a single pressure that has brought me to writing, it is regret...'

Vernon God Little was selected from 117 entries and Finlay received prize-money of 50,000 pounds.

Turner Hospital Receives Patrick White Award
Janette Turner Hospital has been awarded the 2003 Patrick White Award. The award, established with income drawn from White's Nobel Prize for Literature, is presented to a writer 'who has been highly creative over a long period, but has not received adequate recognition for their work'. Prior to this award, Hospital's only major Australian prize was this year's Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Fiction for Due Preparations for the Plague. (She has been shortlisted three times for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, but has never won.)

Hospital left Australia in the late 1960s and has lived predominantly in North America since then. However, she regularly makes extended visits to Queensland and has been a writer-in-residence at Australian universities. After a publishing hiatus of 7 years, Hospital recently published a selection of short stories, North of Nowhere, South of Loss and the novel, Due Preparations for the Plague.

Fiction and Non-Fiction Share Vogel
For the first time in the 23-year history of The Australian/Vogel National Literary Award (for an Unpublished Manuscript), a non-fiction work has been awarded the top honour. Ruth Balint's Troubled Waters, adapted from a film documentary and a PhD thesis, examines the experience of West Timorese fisherman imprisoned in Broome. Balint shared the prize with lawyer Nick Angel, a Queenslander currently resident in Paris. Angel's manuscript, Drown Them in the Sea, echoes his own childhood growing up on a western Queensland property in a harsh environment.

Commonly regarded as solely a fiction prize, the Vogel is open to a work of fiction, Australian history or biography and is awarded to a writer under the age of 35. (The age limit until 1982 was under 30.) An editorial comment in The Australian, 24 September, observed that today 'writers who are just beginning a literary career are not necessarily young in years [...] It is noticeable that there are many aspiring authors whose working lives and family obligations have precluded them from writing until their more mature years.' The editorial concludes with the hope that 2004 might see 'an end to the existing exclusion of older but beginning authors.'

New Category Included in Victorian Premier's Awards
An award for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer has been inaugurated in this year's Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. The prize has gone to Carrie Tiffany for her novel, The Cultivator. Set in the Victorian town of Wycheproof during the 1930s, the judges commented that the novel 'captures, in beautifully assured detail, the hope and disappointment of an era'.

Other winners in this year's awards include:

• Brian Castro for Shanghai Dancing
• Barry Hill for Broken Song : T. G. H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession
• Emma Lew for Anything the Landlord Touches
• Joanna Murray-Smith for Rapture

and

• David Metzenthen for Wildlight : A Journey

A full list of awards in all categories can be found on the State Library of Victoria's website.

Latest Round of Literature Board Grants and Fellowships
In late October, the Literature Board of the Australia Council announced the successful applicants in this year's round of New Work Grants and Fellowships. The Board received 452 applications and approved 80, offering a total of $1,845,000 to the successful contenders. (Slightly less than the $1,937,500 offered in 2002).

Once-in-a-lifetime Fellowships, attracting $40,000 per year for two years, were awarded to John Romeril, Damien Broderick and Kathleen Stewart. Romeril, in a comment to The Australian, 24 October, said 'I am thinking in terms of the runs home, [...] it allows me to get across some long-term projects and tool up, or gear up for the last lap.'

Three New Work Grants were awarded for projects in languages other than English. A Spanish and English poetry collection will be the focus for Chilean migrant, Juan Garrido Salgado. Nejmeh Habib and Erma Vassiliou will both work on literary non-fiction, Habib writing in Arabic and Vassiliou in Greek.

Among other initiatives, the Board approved $10,000 towards 'the production of an anthology of Australian poets translated by German poets'. The anthology will be edited by Ivor Indyk and published by leading German publisher DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag. The project marks the culmination of Australian participation in the Poesiefestival, an international cultural festival held in Berlin in June-July this year.

A complete listing of all successful applicants for New Work Grants and Fellowships can be viewed via the Literature Board's September 2003 Assessment Meeting Report on the Australia Council's website.

Online Journals
Among the newest on-line journals are:

• Philament
  Edited and published by students at the University of Sydney, Philament 'aims to develop an intellectual community that has both an interdisciplinary and intercampus nature.' It is designed to be 'a conduit for uninhibited academic debate, critical discussion and creative expression over a broad range of topics within the literary arts and cultural studies.' All academic articles are refereed and an Advisory Panel, currently comprising Don Anderson, Judith Barbour, Judith Beveridge, Drusilla Modjeska and Margaret Rogerson, supports the editorial committee.
  
  
• Hutt
  A poetry journal edited by Paul Hardacre and published by Papertiger Media, Hutt is whimsically described by its editor as 'our little home for poetry. We find words, give them a room and some snacks, maybe a quick scrub, and send them back out into the world with new shoes and a bum part.'

For those gearing up for some holiday reading over the Christmas/New Year period, here are some 'hot off the press' options.

This Sporting Life
Amidst a plethora of recent sports-related autobiographies comes Fiona Capp's unusual memoir That Oceanic Feeling. A keen surfer in her youth and early adult life, Capp had been distracted from the surf by work, education and family priorities. Approaching 40, she felt the need to climb back on a board. Capp explores the practicalities of reviving her surfing technique and also delves into the internal and personal aspects of a voyage with waves. James Bradley (The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October) writes that 'Surfing, the ocean and the self dissolve into each other, and Capp finds a deeper understanding of who she is and how she might live with that person.'

To find a full list of the 2003 sporting autobiographies on AustLit use the Advanced Search option. In the Work list, choose First Known Date (under Publication details) and Form (under Type/Form/Genre). From the Subject list, choose General Subject Terms. Click on Select and your tailored search page will display. Enter the following Search Values: 2003 (First Known Date), Autobiography (Form) and Sport (Subject). Click the 'And narrower' box adjacent to Sport and then click the Search button. Your Search Result will give you a list of recent autobiographies dominated by cricketers, athletes and footballers.

Feel a Novel Coming On?
Hitting the market just in time for Christmas sales are:

• The Touch, Colleen McCullough's 500-plus page historical saga set in the gold fields
• Scarecrow, Matthew Reilly's newest blockbuster delving into the world of modern-day bounty hunters
• The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzard's World War II novel, set in Japan
• Homecoming, Adib Khan's treatment of the life of a returned serviceman in the aftermath of the Vietnam War
• The Slapping Man, Andrew Lindsay's second novel, featuring the impact of an outsider in a small community

and

• Murder at the Fortnight, Steve J. Spears' first foray in adult fiction (but not altogether abandoning the world of the theatre)

A Leisurely Stroll Through Some Poetry
For an alternative to prose, sample some recently published poetry. If the prospect of travel to an exotic destination is enticing, but the cost prohibitive, try a vicarious journey with:

• Andrew Peek in The Calabar Transcript. Peek draws on his backpacking experiences through Tanzania, Malawi and Ghana for this collection

or

• Barry Scott in Love and Wigs : Poems of Bangkok, Bollywood and Beyond. Scott's poetry is inspired by his travels through India, Sri Lanka and Thailand

If a setting closer to home appeals, explore:

• Louise Oxley's Compound Eye, a collection firmly embedded in the landscape of Tasmania

or

• Richard Hillman's Jabiluka Honey, a mixture of poems and photography. The title poem deals with the Jabiluka uranium mine and environmental damage in a World Heritage area

More universal themes are addressed in:

• John Kinsella's Peripheral Light, a selection admiringly edited by American critic Harold Bloom

and

• Bruce Dawe's The Headlong Traffic, covering poetry (and some prose) written over the last five years

A Death Barely Mourned
Largely unnoticed by the Australian press, including the literary press, was the death in 2002 of playwright Ray Mathew. Mathew was most prominent in the Sydney literary world of the 1950s. His realist plays were read and performed, his poetry extensively published in The Bulletin, and his reviews appeared in The Observer. During his sojourn in London (having traveled there to see the first performance of his play Life of the Party in 1960), Mathew oversaw the Australian publication of his biographies of Miles Franklin and the artist Charles Blackman. With a substantial body of work to his credit, Mathew moved to New York and never returned to Australia. His literary output all but ceased.

In personal tributes, Myfanwy Gollan (The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 2002) and Tom Shapcott (Five Bells, Winter 2003) recall occasional meetings with Mathew in Sydney, London and New York and the profound impression he left on their lives. To a young Tom Shapcott, new to the bright lights of Sydney in 1958, Mathew 'was a beacon [...] everything of his I read gave a new ginger to the orthodox lyricism of the period and he seemed the only other poet in this country to have even heard of e.e.cummings.' Gollan testifies to Mathew's on-going Australian-ness despite his 50 years as an expatriate. She took delight in the scene created for Mathew's last birthday when he lay 'bedridden and dying'. Manhattan friends 'put on a party in his book-walled room with anything Australian they could find - a boomerang, stuffed koalas, various versions of 'Waltzing Matilda'. It could have been a scene from a Ray Mathew play.'

Advocate for Australian Children's Literature Dies
Laurie Copping, a dedicated enthusiast of children's literature, died in Canberra in September. Copping's working life was spent as a primary school teacher in NSW and at Hall, in rural ACT. He was heavily involved in the work of the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA), particularly the ACT Branch. Copping was a regular reviewer for the CBCA's journal, Reading Time and for The Canberra Times. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Lu Rees Archive located at the University of Canberra. Copping was honoured for his commitment to children's literature with a number of awards including an Order of Australia Medal (1990) and the inaugural CBCA National Council Citation for outstanding service (1990).

(The Lu Rees Archive has been a contributor to AustLit since 2001 and its holdings form the basis of AustLit's Children's Literature Subset.)

The answers to the questions from the Brisbane Writers' Festival 2003 Literary Quiz:

1. Thomas Keneally
2. Elliot Perlman
3. John Birmingham
4. Clean Straw for Nothing
5. Ethel Malley
6. Bliss

As this is our last newsletter for 2003, AustLit would like to take this early opportunity to wish all of our AustLit newsletter subscribers a safe and happy festive season and all the very best in 2004.

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