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AUSTLIT NEWS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

Welcome to the latest newsletter from AustLit, bringing you up to date with news on the Australian literary scene and on new developments and services at AustLit.

Please note:

• Hyperlinks to AustLit records in the body of the newsletter are only fully available to AustLit subscribers. Links to external sites are available to all readers.
• AustLit is widely available through the university and public library sectors. Ask at your local library about access.
• To enquire about guest access to AustLit, contact us via email: info-austlit@austlit.edu.au

The latest news on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing and storytelling is also avaible. Click here to link to Black Words e-news for October - November 2008.

Aus-e-Lit Project Underway AustLit, in conjunction with the UQ eResearch Lab, has received funding from the National eResearch Architecture Taskforce (NeAT) to expand the services available through the AustLit interface.

This first phase of the project aims to establish federated searching across a number of databases, including AustLit, SETIS, the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, Picture Australia and Libraries Australia. A prototype should be completed by December 2008 and a federated searching facility should be completed by July 2009.

The second phase of the project (2009-2010) will concentrate on the development of annotation services, enabling research communities to collaboratively tag or annotate digital resources, including full text documents. Such annotation might include keywords, notes, comments, interpretations and links to related resources. These annotations can be stored in a searchable format, enabling users to share these annotations with their research community.

The third phase of the project (2010-2011) will allow users to create, publish, edit, search and retrieve OAI-ORE compliant Compound Objects that relate multiple resources from disparate databases. For example, a researcher could relate an AustLit work record with relevant finding aids and full-text resources. The compound object can be stored for retrieval and analysis at a later date. This facility will be particularly useful for short and long-term research projects. The accumulation of compound objects and annotations will ultimately produce a rich resource for present and future researchers of Australian literature.

The NeAT funding supports two dedicated programmers and a project manager. Roger Osborne, who has been associated with AustLit for many years, has accepted the position of project manager and looks forward to discussing the needs of AustLit researchers in an increasingly digital field of study. Senior programmer Anna Gerber has significant experience in the development of search and annotation services and she will be assisted by Chris Davoren.

Until these services become available, interested researchers can follow the progress of the project in the AustLit Newsletter or by visiting the Aus-e-Lit Project site or the Aus-e-Lit blog. For those interested in testing the services when they become available, please contact Roger Osborne at r.osborne@uq.edu.au.

Goldfields Bards’ Research Strikes It Rich
Charles McLaughlin, based at The University of Western Australia (UWA), has begun work on a new AustLit subset, ‘The Goldfields Bards of Western Australia’. The aim of the subset is to index the vast quantities of poetry and prose that appeared in at least sixty, and possibly as many as a hundred, newspapers that flourished in Western Australia’s outback regions following fabulously rich gold finds of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Charles writes:

In booming towns like Kalgoorlie, Boulder, Coolgardie, Cue, Meekatharra, Day Dawn, Peak Hill and, yes, Bummers Creek, talented newspaper editors actively sought contributions from local writers in the belief that topical verse was an integral component of good journalism. The editors were especially interested in verse and prose written from personal experience and with local 'colour'. In nineteenth century parlance, this was referred to as 'Manly Writing' and 'Manly Wit', meaning working class writing and working class wisdom derived from the 'University of Life'.

To encourage and develop the talents of local versifiers and storytellers, work by eastern Australian writers was often re-printed from sources such as Sydney's Bulletin and Smith's Weekly. This work was supported by criticism covering contemporary literary developments.

While some famous names emerged among the Goldfields Bards, the vast bulk of work accepted for publication appeared anonymously. UWA research is initially focussing on this anonymous material and the results are proving richly rewarding. To address the problem of attribution of this work, AustLit has established an ‘identity’ known as ‘The Goldfields Poet’. By-products of this research have so far included:

Another outcome of the goldfields research has been an uncovering of details about the life of the so-called ‘Meekatharra Poet’ whose 1925 book, Selected Poems from the Works of J. E. Liddle (published in three editions), contained a substantial body of work that was written against the trend of ‘Manly’ poetry. But virtually nothing was known about John Liddle beyond his book; his ‘profile’ had been lost in time. AustLit can now reveal that Liddle was a ‘Hatter’. In Goldfields speech this meant that he was a man who lived and worked alone. He is listed in Post Office records as a resident of Meekatharra between 1920 and 1930, describing himself as an insurance agent. He corresponded with the Western Australia library about the loan of books during these years. But mostly he wrote poetry, and his work was often published in various Murchison district newspapers. Liddle left town in 1930, and we know nothing of him after that, but we’re working on it.

Explore The Goldfields Bards of Western Australia via the Western Australia Literature research community home page.

AustLit Team Out and About at ALIA Dreaming ’08 and the Brisbane Writers Festival
AustLit team members Yaritji Green and Joan Keating recently attended the Australian Library and Information Association’s Dreaming ’08 conference in Alice Springs, 2-5 September. They presented two poster sessions on the Black Words research community before an audience of approximately 500 librarians, ensuring good publicity for AustLit and Black Words. Indigenous Literacy Day (see report in ‘In the News’) took place during the conference and Anita Heiss, national coordinator of Black Words, delivered one of the conference’s key note addresses on that day. She also spoke about Black Words.

At the Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF), 18-21 September, AustLit sponsored two well-attended sessions. Kerry Kilner, AustLit’s executive manager, chaired a lively debate on the topic: ‘What Makes Australian Literature Australian?’ with panellists author Matthew Condon, UQP publisher Madonna Duffy, Australian Society of Authors chair Anita Heiss and arts writer with the Australian Rosemary Sorensen. The debate was made more topical in light of the controversy surrounding the English Teachers Association (ETA) 'Response to Consultation Strengthening Australian Literature in the NSW English Curriculum'. (Read the ETA response at: http://www.englishteacher.com.au/downloads/ETAOzLitresponse.pdf.)

The second AustLit sponsored session at BWF, ‘Researching the Past,’ was chaired by Leigh Dale and featured Kate Grenville and Simon Cleary speaking about the extensive historical and family research each conducted to provide material for their books, respectively The Lieutenant and The Comfort of Figs.

Anita Heiss spoke at two sessions: ‘The History of Aboriginal Literature – Longer Than You Think’ with Sam Wagan Watson, and ‘One for the Ladies’ with Alli Kincaid and Estelle Pinney, a session about books written especially for a female audience. Elizabeth Hodgson, a member of the Black Words team, launched her book Skin Painting, which won the David Unaipon Award in 2007. Elizabeth and Anita also participated in a poetry reading from their works, together with Sarah Holland-Batt and Bronwyn Lea. At left: Elizabeth Hodgson at the Brisbane Writers Festival 2008.

Fore more Black Words news, see the October - November issue of Black Words e-news.

AustLit Farewells Team Member from the Far North
Linda Wight has been part of the AustLit team at James Cook University since July 2006. She has combined her AustLit research work with PhD studies on masculinities in recent ‘gender-bending’ science fiction. Linda is soon to submit her thesis and will take up full-time work as Education Officer at the Townsville Correctional Centre.

Reflecting on her time with AustLit, Linda writes:

My work for AustLit has been varied, interesting and challenging, and has only increased my passion for Australian literature. In particular, I have been working closely with North Queensland literature. My first task was to enter and index the wealth of fiction – poetry and prose – held in the North Queensland collection of the James Cook University library. Together with the indexing work done by Jane Frugtneit and Gillian Barrett, this has produced an important record of the vibrant literature produced by North Queensland writers throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Over the past six months I have also produced new, and updated existing, AustLit records of newspapers published in North Queensland from the 1860s to the present. This fascinating task has identified a host of important figures in Australia’s early newspaper industry, many of whom moved amongst various newspapers as writers, editors, managers and publishers. Much early North Queensland fiction was published in such newspapers, so this has been a valuable and rewarding task.

Although excited about her new role in Corrections, Linda concludes: ‘I am very sad to be leaving the AustLit team and a job that has given me so much enjoyment over the past two years. I look forward to watching AustLit continue to grow in the future.’

Associate Professor Cheryl Taylor speaks for the whole AustLit team when she says: ‘The James Cook University team is sorry to be losing an admirable researcher and much loved friend, but we’re delighted about the new prospects that are opening up for Linda, and we wish her every happiness and success’.

New AustLit Records
During August and September 2008, the Content Development Team added:

• 5,888 new works
• 1,352 new agents (individuals and organisations)

In addition to these new records, over 8,500 existing work and agent records have been upgraded and enhanced.

Melbourne Proclaimed a City of Literature
UNESCO, the Educational, Scientific and Cultural arm of the United Nations, has declared Melbourne its second City of Literature. (Edinburgh was the first in 2004.) The title is ‘a permanent designation recognising Melbourne’s literary strengths across diverse criteria’. Some of the criteria are:

• broad based publishing industry, preferably represented by independent publishing houses
• an urban panorama in which literature, drama and/or poetry play an integral role
• libraries, bookshops and cultural spaces, both public and private, dedicated to the preservation, promotion and dissemination of literature
• birthplace, residence and/or workplace of renowned writers, poets and philosophers

and

• existing works of literature about the city

Responding to the news of Melbourne’s success, Arts Minister Lynne Kosky said the designation recognised and celebrated the city’s rich literary culture, history and creative talent. ‘From early colonial days, literature has helped shape the culture of Melbourne. The State Library of Victoria, founded in 1854, was the first major cultural institution established in the city … Today, Melbourne continues this literary tradition by being home to a third of all Australian writers and to Australia’s publishing sector.’ Peter Carey and Alex Miller joined a chorus of praise for Melbourne. Carey said: ‘I can think of no other Australian city where the pleasures of reading and discussion are so passionately pursued’; Miller commented that he could ‘scarcely imagine a more encouraging milieu for any writer’. (Arts Victoria media release, 20 August 2008)

Included in Melbourne’s bid was a commitment to establish a Centre for Books and Ideas at the State Library of Victoria. The new centre, scheduled for completion in mid-2009, will provide a base for literary organisations such as the Melbourne Writers Festival, the Victorian Writers Centre and the Australian Poetry Centre.

Author Carrie Tiffany was a member of the steering committee for Melbourne’s UNESCO application. She told Katherine Kizilos (Age, 21 August 2008) that the new designation for the city would ‘increase the profile and value of this thing called writing … it’s one of the rare things left in the world that isn’t about money’. Another member of the committee, Kirsty Murray, said: ‘Sometimes you have to name a thing before people see it … By saying we are a City of Literature, people recognise that we not just a city of sport … We want to encourage that culture in Melbourne. It gives people a platform so they can recognise what they already have.’ (Age, 21 August 2008)

Melbourne’s submission to become a City of Literature is available on the Arts Victoria website.

Newspaper Digitisation Project Taking Shape
The National Library of Australia, in collaboration with state and territory libraries, has commenced a digitisation program of 'out of copyright' newspapers. The free online service enables ‘full-text searching of newspaper articles’ and includes ‘newspapers published in each state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s’. To date, over 1.3 million newspaper pages have been scanned from microfilm, about 90,000 of which are already available for public view. A further 20,000 pages will be added each week.

Titles already completed include: The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (1803-1842) (cover image, left, of the first issue, 5 March 1803) and The Canberra Times (1926-1954) In the future, AustLit is planning to link at an item level to the digitised service and will also be exploring automated searching from relevant material indexed in AustLit. The project has already released a BETA search service. It can be accessed via the Australian Newspapers link on the Library’s home page and from the Search tab on the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program (ANDP) website (http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp). The Library welcomes feedback and suggestions on the service.

Indigenous Literacy Day
On Wednesday, 3 September 2008 all Australians were invited to participate in the second Indigenous Literacy Day (ILD). ILD is a partnership between the Australian book industry and the Fred Hollows Foundation.  Indigenous communities ‘select and order reading material from catalogues and sample books provided by the Australian Booksellers Association.’ The books are then purchased and supplied by the Fred Hollows Foundation to ‘schools, libraries, early learning centres such as crèches, Women's Centres and other identified institutions, to enhance their pool of literacy resources.’ (ILD website)

AustLit’s Black Words national coordinator, Anita Heiss, is an ambassador for ILD, together with Alexis Wright, Tara June Winch, Andy Griffiths, Geraldine Brooks and David Malouf. To mark ILD 2008, Anita Heiss attended an event a The Lodge in Canberra, hosted by the ILD Patron Thérèse Rein; she also presented a keynote address at the 2008 ALIA Conference in Alice Springs. The address focused on issues of literacy in remote Aboriginal communities and showcased Black Words as a tool for assisting in the development of reading collections and projects. At right: Anita Heiss and ILD patron Thérèse Rein, September 2008. (Photo credit:  Matthia Dempsey)

For more information on Indigenous Literary Day, go to the project’s website: http://www.worldwithoutbooks.org/.

First Airing of a ‘Modern Play’, 100 Years after Writing
The Mitchell Library holds two copies of Miles Franklin’s ‘The Survivors: A Modern Play in Two Acts’; one is signed 'Miles Franklin, Shawondasee, August 1908'. The play centres on the life of actor and heiress Avis Gaylord. Researcher and writer Jocelyn Hedley says that Gaylord ‘struggles with her conscience’. Gaylord ‘cannot bear the weight of wealth that she knows has come at the expense of “the legs and lungs” of others. She is bored with the plays in which she has been performing’ and wants to learn about life from the perspective of the working class: ‘“I want to know everything from the other side,” she says. “You must not spare me.”’ (Australian, 23 August 2008)

Although written 100 years ago, Franklin’s play has never had a full production. In September this year Macquarie University and the State Library of New South Wales combined resources to host a ‘the first ever reading’ of the play in the Library’s Metcalfe Auditorium. Hedley says that Franklin’s writing in ‘The Survivors’ displays ‘a sharp yet delicate wit; she depicts her time but also speaks to our age. She captures too the struggle of the working class in America by way of a good story and a series of fascinating characters. Her work is all the more interesting because it is the pen of an Australian woman that captures these things, the pen of an Australian woman not remembered as a playwright’.

The State Library will host another Franklin-related event in November with the launch of Jill Roe’s Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography. The book will be launched by Drusilla Modjeska in the Dixson Room of the Mitchell Wing on 5 November. The cost is $22.00 and bookings are strongly advised. Bookings information is available at: http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/bookings/index.html At right: cover image of Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography by Jill Roe. Photo used with permission: HarperCollins

‘Banjo’ Originals Discovered
‘I pulled out this cash book and started to read it … at the back … there are a series of handwritten poems signed Banjo Paterson’. (Parramatta Advertiser, 13 August 2008) These are the words of Ian Hawthorn, spokesman for the Royal New South Wales Lancer Barracks in Parramatta, Sydney. Hawthorn was investigating the contents of ‘a filing cabinet in a tin shed at the back of the barracks’ when he came across a cash book that had been used as a diary by Major G. L. Lee en route to the Boer War in 1899. Travelling with Lee, as a war correspondent, was A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson.

The poems in the diary are ‘There’s Another Blessed Horse Fell Down’ and ‘Johnny Boer’. Both poems were published in the Sydney Mail on 17 February 1900. A manuscript librarian at the Mitchell Library has confirmed the handwriting in the cash book is Paterson’s. The poems will now undergo scientific testing in the hope of providing conclusive verification.

In Other News:

• Margo Lanagan and Professor Gail Jones have been appointed to the Literature Board of the Australia Council for a three-year term. Other Literature Board members are Dr Imre Salusinszky, (chair), Dr Jack Hibberd, Dr Peter Holbrook, Professor Nicholas Jose and Fay Zwicky.
• Mills and Boon is celebrating its 100th year in the publishing industry. Now the world’s largest publisher of romance fiction, Mills and Boon was founded in 1908 by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon. It was purchased by Harlequin Enterprises in 1971. A recent estimate, (published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 30-31 August 2008), is that Harlequin Mills & Boon publish more than one in five of the paperbacks sold in Australia.
• Angus and Robertson has launched a ‘print on demand’ Espresso Book Machine at its central Melbourne store. The new service will focus on out of copyright titles that are in the public domain and has begun with a list of around 200 titles. Angus and Robertson hopes to increase that number to 100,000 in the next 18 months. One of the first books to be made available is Dal Stivens’s 1970 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner A Horse of Air. It has been out of print for over 20 years.

and

• British magazine the Spectator is launching its first overseas edition in the Australian market. The new version, to be printed in Sydney, will include twelve pages of Australian content. The Spectator has appointed Oscar Humphries as editor of its overseas foray. Humphries says: ‘I am quite emotional about the Spectator. It is a magazine unlike any other … I am Australian, I love Australia and I’m thrilled to be able to bring those things together … I think it is important because there does remain an enormous cultural synergy between the UK and Australia. Given the closure of the Bulletin, our arrival is particularly timely.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 2008)

Matt Ottley, in response to criticism over language and themes explored in his picture book Requiem for a Beast:

I have come to realize, from the tone and language of some of the emails I’ve received, that sadly, racism and bigotry are alive and well in this country. We can continue to bury our heads in the sand about these issues, or we can confront them by exposing them for scrutiny. That is often the role of literature such as Requiem for a Beast.

(Matt Ottley’s website)

Conte Wins at the PM’s Awards

Steven Conte, a first-time novelist, was declared the inaugural fiction winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in a ceremony held at Parliament House, Canberra, on 12 September. Conte’s wining novel is The Zookeeper’s War, a story that explores the complexities of thrown-together wartime lives via the microcosm of the Berlin Zoo. In the non-fiction section, historian Philip Jones won for his examination of Aboriginal artefacts in Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers.

The Prime Minister, the Honorable Kevin Rudd, presented each of the winning authors with a $100,000 tax free prize and said it had been inspiring and heartening to see the quality and breadth of contemporary Australian literature represented in the winning and short-listed works.

Above: Philip Jones, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Steven Conte and Arts Minister Peter Garrett at the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, September 2008.
(Photo credit and copyright: Department of the Environment, Heritage, Water and the Arts)

Although the final decision on the winners was the Prime Minister’s prerogative, Mr Rudd made it clear that he had accepted the recommendations of both the fiction and non-fiction judging panels. The fiction panel, comprising Professor Peter Pierce, John Marsden and Margaret Throsby, recommended Conte’s novel ‘for its command of engrossing plot and vivid historical setting, for the ethical seriousness that informs its every incident and entanglement [and] for the freshness and vivacity of a new voice in Australian fiction’. (Media release, 12 September 2008)

Fantasy and Realism in the Mix for CBCA Awards
The winners of the 2008 Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards include two stories in the fantasy genre and others with a grittier bent. Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child won the award for Older Readers and Carole Wilkinson’s Dragon Moon won the Younger Readers category. Both are fantasy books. The Picture Book award was won by Matt Ottley for Requiem for a Beast, the Early Childhood award went to Aaron Blabey’s Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley and Frances Watts and David Legge won the Eve Pownall Award for Information Books with Parsley Rabbit’s Book about Books.

The Picture Book category stirred discussion in 2008 (as it has several times since the CBCA established a new category in 2001 for Early Childhood, thereby freeing up the criteria for picture books). Some commentators have criticised the Book Council for selecting a picture book in which strong language is used and confronting themes addressed. The CBCA Awards handbook makes it clear that an element of the selection criteria for the Picture Book of the Year is ‘an implied readership under the age of eighteen’. In general, it says, the Picture Book award is made to an outstanding book ‘in which the author and illustrator achieve artistic and literary unity, or, in wordless picture books, where the story, theme or concept is unified through illustrations.’

Bronwen Bennett, national president of the CBCA countered criticism relating to the selection of Ottley’s Requiem for a Beast, saying that the Council makes ‘no apology for being a literary award’ and not a popular choice award. Bennett favours the restoration of teacher librarians in all schools to counter a reliance on the Book Council’s awards as an arbiter of suitability for school library collections. (Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August 2008)

Matt Ottley has expressed his disappointment over critical reports of Requiem for a Beast. In a posting on his website, responding to ‘scurrilously misrepresentative’ reports, Ottley asks people to ‘read the book before making any judgements about it’. He defends the use of strong language, saying its occurrence is minimal and ‘it is intended to reflect the language often used by Australian stockmen’. Ottley affirms that Requiem for a Beast ‘is a book for young adults and adults, and no one has ever suggested that it is anything other than that’. (Matt Ottley’s website)

More information about the winners and the honour books for 2008 CBCA Book of the Year Awards can be found on the Council’s website.

AWGIE Recognition for Doug MacLeod
Doug MacLeod, a Melbourne television writer and producer, won the inaugural John Hinde Award for Science Fiction at the 2008 AWGIE Awards. The award is named in honour of film critic John Hinde and aims to ‘encourage, reward and foster creativity in the development and showcasing of science fiction writing for feature film, short film, television, radio and interactive media’. (Australian Writers’ Guild media release, 18 August 2008) MacLeod won the award for the script of Man Bites Dog, an episode in his Dogstar series. The series is set in the year 2347 and tracks a quest through space to find the Dogstar, a lost ark full of dogs. Man Bites Dog also won the award for Children’s Television.

The AWGIE Awards, presented annually since 1967 by the Australian Writers’ Guild, recognise ‘excellence in screen, television, stage and radio writing’. Other winners at the 2008 awards include:

• Debra Oswald’s Stories in the Dark (Theatre for Young Audiences)
• Michael Costello’s ‘Royal Affair’ (Community and Youth Theatre)
• Tom Holloway’s Beyond the Neck (Stage)

and

• Katherine Thomson’s ‘Fragments of Hong Kong’ (Radio Adaptation)

The recipient of the Kit Denton Fellowship was also announced at the AWGIEs. The $25,000 award ‘for performance writers of courage and excellence’ was presented to playwright Suzie Miller for her project ‘Truth’. Miller’s project explores the world of a child killer and questions ‘the nature of evil, punishment and the role of the justice system’. (Australian Writers’ Guild media release, 18 August 2008)

Bovell and Garner Doubly Rewarded by Premiers
Andrew Bovell and Helen Garner were each honoured in the recently announced Victorian and Queensland Premiers’ Awards. Bovell’s play ‘When the Rain Stops Falling’ won The Louis Esson Prize for Drama (Victoria) and the Drama Script (Stage) Award (Queensland). ‘When the Rain Stops Falling’ had its world premiere at the Adelaide Festival in February 2008. Leading up to the opening, Bovell told the Advertiser’s Louise Nunn that he had written the play in collaboration with visual artist Hossein Valamanesh: ‘We found a shared sensibility, a sort of quiet melancholy, a beauty and stillness ... They were qualities I was searching for in the writing that were expressed in his visual aesthetic. So those two languages evolved at the same time and informed one another as we went along.’ (16 February 2008)

Helen Garner won The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction (Victoria) and the Fiction Book Award (Queensland) for The Spare Room, a novel dealing with friendship, caring, healing and dying. Aspects of the novel echoed experiences in Garner’s own life but, when questioned about the connection and her mode of writing, Garner declared her frustration with distinctions between fiction and non-fiction: ‘The ideal thing for me would be to write and say, here's a book, it's a story, read it anyway you would like. But these days people are always thinking about categories and wanting to put things in them. So people do want to know what will be expected of them if they open a book or what they can expect of the writer … What if it was me or wasn't me? What difference would it make to the meaning or worth of the story?’ (Age, 29 March 2008)

Garner is now delighted that the literary judges have responded to her book as a novel. Speaking after the Victorian announcement, she said: ‘I'm very happy and honoured and glad, particularly for this book because there was this surprising response to whether it should be called fiction or not. I just find it completely ludicrous that anyone should think it wouldn't be. And so this is a wonderful feeling of gratification.’ (Age, 2 September 2008)

In all other award categories, the judges of the Victorian and Queensland awards diverged. The Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award for poetry went to David Malouf for Typewriter Music; the Victorian equivalent, the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry, was given to Press Release by Lisa Gorton. Poet Yvette Holt, a member of AustLit’s Black Words team, won Victoria’s Indigenous Writing Prize for her collection Anonymous Premonition. In Queensland, the David Unaipon Award for an unpublished indigenous writer was presented to Marie Munkara her short story collection ‘Every Secret Thing’.

A full list of winners for the Victorian and Queensland awards is available, respectively, on the websites of the State Library of Victoria and the Queensland Government.

First Blake Prize for Poetry Announced
Poet, essayist and writing teacher Mark Tredinnick is the winner of the inaugural Blake Poetry Prize. The Blake judges described Tredinnick’s winning poem, ‘Have You Seen’, as ‘a beautiful evocation of the Australian landscape seen through a veil of spirituality … In its restrained limitations, its gentle tugs at the sleeve of awareness, its poignant observations, the poem affirms that spirituality is implicit in the world.’

The judges also commended two poems: Chloe Wilson’s ‘Dorothy Wordsworth, Boiling Turnips’ and another Tredinnick poem, ‘Paradise’. All three poems are published in the Spring 2008 issue of Wet Ink and can be viewed on Wet Ink’s website. To read Mark Tredinnick’s essay ‘On Winning the Blake Poetry Prize’, visit his website.

Text Announces Winner of Young Adult Writing Prize
Text Publishing awarded its first Young Adult Writing Prize to Richard Newsome’s debut novel, ‘The Billionaire’s Curse’. The novel, a mystery story featuring a huge inheritance and disquieting ‘hit list’, was chosen from among 300 entries from Australia and New Zealand. Text publisher Michael Heyward described the book as a ‘brilliantly original whodunit which is stylish, funny and very entertaining – and is going to appeal to a really broad spectrum of readers.’

Newsome’s prize is $10,000 and a publishing contract with Text. ‘The Billionaire’s Curse’ will be published in July 2009. Entries for the 2009 prize open in May next year.

Romance Writers Announce R*BY Awards
Kimberley Freeman and Anne Oliver are the winners of the 2008 R*BY Awards offered by the Romance Writers of Australia (RWA). Freeman (a pseudonym of Kim Wilkins) won the long fiction award for Duet and Anne Oliver received the short fiction prize for One Night before Marriage. The awards are open to all Australian and New Zealand writers of romance novels and are voted on by Australian readers.

Romance Writers of Australia points out Australian romance writers generally find publication overseas, usually in the USA or the UK; their books are currently published in 120 countries and in 26 languages. In the USA, romance fiction accounts for almost 40% of paperback sales (compared to nearly 13% for general fiction). Few Australian publishers publish romance fiction so local statistics are not easily available. RWA declares: ‘We [romance writers] are regarded as exporters by the taxation department. We are paid in US dollars or pounds or Euros. We promote Australia and Australian locations to an international readership – without any funding from Austrade or the Australian Tourism Commission. Readers all over the world love reading about our “exotic” downunder locations.’ (RWA website)

Other Recent Award Announcements

• The 14th annual Deadly Awards, honouring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander achievements in music, sport, entertainment and community, were announced Sydney Opera House on 9 October. Winners included Anita Heiss and Peter Minter, editors of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, for Outstanding Achievement in Literature, and Trevor Jamieson for Excellence in Film & Theatrical Score for his stage production 'Ngapartji Ngapartji'.

• The Wilderness Society presented its 2008 Environment Award for Children’s Literature to Nadia Wheatley and Ken Searle for Going Bush. The book provides ‘an inspirational and practical model for getting to know your local habitat, with the essential message of living in harmony with the land and with other people’. (Wilderness Society media release, 11 June 2008)

• Going Bush also won the Lower Primary section of the Speech Pathology Australia awards. In the other sections, Pamela Allen’s Is Your Grandmother a Goanna? won the Young Children’s prize and Jenni Overend’s Stride’s Summer won the Upper Primary prize.

• The 2008 Ned Kelly Awards were presented to Chris Womersley for The Low Road (Best First Fiction), Michael Robotham for Shatter (Best Fiction) and Evan McHugh for Red Centre, Dark Heart (Best Non-Fiction). Marele Day received the Lifetime Achievement Award.The Awards have been running for over ten years; they aim to ‘promote and encourage Australian crime writing’.

• Malcolm Knox’s Jamaica won the 2008 Colin Roderick Award. The award, for the ‘best book published in in the preceding year dealing with an aspect of Australian life’, is named after the late Professor Colin Roderick who founded James Cook University’s Foundation of Australian Literary Studies. The Foundation now administers the annual Colin Roderick Award.

• Carolyn Fisher’s collection The Unsuspecting Sky won PressPress’s 2008 Chapbook Award. Poetry publisher PressPress says Fisher’s poems present ‘an accessible vision of the natural and social world around her’. The poems were written with the benefit of Australia Council and Arts Tasmania grants.

And Watch Out For…

• The 2008 Man Booker Prize will be announced in London on 14 October. The shortlist of six books includes Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Both authors are first-time novelists.

• The Dylan Thomas Prize, for the best published writer in English under the age of 30 from anywhere in the world, will be announced in November 2008. Nam Le, author of The Boat, is shortlisted along with two writers from Britain and one from South Africa.

• Australia’s independent booksellers will announce the winner of their newly established Indie Award on 6 October. The winner will be chosen from a shortlist comprising:
• Shaun Tan – Tales from Outer Suburbia (Children’s Book)
• Toni Jordan – Addition (Debut Fiction)
• Don Watson – American Journeys (Non-Fiction)

and

• Tim Winton – Breath (Fiction)

• Three Australian and three international books are shortlisted for this year’s Inkys, Australia's only teenage-choice book award. The Australian titles are: Town by James Roy, Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan and A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper. The winners of the Gold (Australian) and Silver (international) Inkys will be announced in Melbourne on 6 November. (See ‘Submissions and Applications’ for news on voting for the winner.)

• The 2007 Western Australian Premier’s Books Awards will be announced on 21 November. The Awards were originally scheduled to be proclaimed in June 2008, but have been delayed to coincide with the announcement of the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award.

Disquiet Expressed over Curriculum Development Process
Leading English academics and the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH) have expressed concern over the National Curriculum Board’s appointment of Professor Peter Freebody to oversee the ‘framing document’ for the development of a national English curriculum. President of the AAH, Professor Ian Donaldson, told the Australian newspaper (11 September 2008) that ‘English literature is an important field and it's important to have wise and informed guidance from those very familiar with the field … I am concerned in principle by the appointment to this important post of someone who is evidently lacking any real professional qualification in the field on which he is required to offer expert advice.’ (Professor Freebody’s primary teaching and research interests, as stated on his website, are literacy education, educational disadvantage, classroom interaction and quantitative and qualitative research methods.)

Professors Gillian Whitlock, Robert Dixon, John Frow and Deirdre Coleman supported Professor Donaldson’s statement. In a letter to the Weekend Australian (13-14 September), they said: ‘The failure to draw on the expertise of specialists in English and literary studies is not a good start to what is meant to be a process of widespread consultation with specialist teachers and academics in the discipline’.

In a follow-up letter to members of the Australian literary community (via the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s email group), the Professors made it clear that they had no objection to Professor Freebody’s appointment, noting that he is ‘an eminent scholar in Education and a prime mover behind the critical literacy initiative’. They continue: ‘However we do object to the failure to recognise the contribution that we have to make as professionals in the discipline’.

Professors Whitlock, Dixon, Frow and Coleman are urging colleagues to engage in the curriculum debate on fundamental issues such as: ‘ the relations between "literacy" and "literature" and the marginalisation of literary texts (classic, Australian and contemporary) in framing curriculum; the need to reassert the value of the rhetorical and aesthetic training that occurs in practices of close literary reading; and the importance of basics such as understanding texts in terms of structure, language [and] subject matter before they are re-contextualised, rewritten and remediated by students’.

In encouraging involvement with the development of the English curriculum, Professors Whitlock, Dixon, Frow and Coleman stress: ‘our objectives are to be heard in a public debate, and to be properly represented in the formal consultation process in the development of a National Curriculum. There is no intention of replacing specialists in Education who have a major role to play in the formulation of Subject English, rather we are looking to initiate an approach to the development and implementation of a National Curriculum that is transparent, inclusive, and wide-ranging.’ (Email, ‘Literature and the National Curriculum’, 22 September 2008)

In another letter to the Australian, Queensland President of the English Teachers Association, Garry Collins, drew attention to the Board’s responsibility to develop a curriculum for all students from kindergarten through to Year 12. ‘If a literary studies academic had been appointed instead of Peter Freebody,’ said Collins, ‘people could reasonably have asked what someone who had spent a career teaching literature at university would know about the initial teaching of reading or teaching effective writing in Years 4 to 9’. (13-14 September 2008)

The National Curriculum Board states: ‘Small advisory groups with curriculum, teaching and discipline expertise’ will assist with the development of the framing papers in the four subject areas of Science, Maths, History and English. During October, the Board will hold Consultation Forums for each of the four disciplines. The English forum will take place in Melbourne on 17 October. Participation in the forums is via Expression of Interest and the Board website indicates that all 150 places for each forum have been filled. The Board plans to present key documents online and key presentations will be available via vodcast. Those interested can also join to an email alert list; to subscribe, follow the link on the Board’s ‘Get Involved’ page.

Tim Winton Tackles Toads
Tim Winton has joined other volunteers at the 2008 Great Toad Muster. The muster is organised by the Stop the Toad Foundation, ‘a non-government, non-profit organisation created to combat the imminent infestation of the Kimberley and other parts of WA by cane toads’. Muster participants gathered at Timber Creek, Northern Territory, just east of the Western Australian border in a bid ‘to reduce toad numbers and push their frontline back toward the east’.

Winton, patron of the foundation, acknowledges the annual collection of the toads is not a ‘permanent solution’ but does offer ‘a holding action while the scientific boffins in Canberra … find a biological solution’. Winton is well-known for his love of the Kimberley. He says: ‘I feel like I owe it something because it has given me such enormous pleasure. I will do whatever I can to preserve it.’ (Age, 26 September 2008)

The 2008 Great Toad Muster runs from 20 September to 8 October. For a deeper insight into Winton’s engagement with the Kimberley region see his introduction to Russell Gue´ho’s Rhythms of the Kimberley: A Seasonal Journey through Australia's North published by Fremantle Press in 2007. Also of interest is Winton's essay, ‘Silent Country’, in the October 2008 issue of the Monthly. In it, Winton reflects on his journey through a recovering Western Australian wheatbelt landscape. He notes the ‘quiet process of repatriation being undertaken by groups of inspiring individuals who have "taken conservation into their own hands"’. (Monthly website)

Your Votes Wanted
Australian Book Review (ABR) is commemorating the life and work of the late John Button with a new annual prize. The John Button Readers’ Award will be presented to ‘the author of the most popular article published in ABR during the previous year, as selected by ABR readers’.

ABR says: ‘In keeping with John Button’s democratic spirit and his status as the most popular contributor to ABR (which emerged when we surveyed our readers in 2006), we invite ABR readers (whether subscribers or not) to decide who wins the inaugural John Button Readers’ Award’. The author of the winning article will receive $1,000 and one voter will win a copy of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Voting closes on 17 November 2008. For the voting form and full guidelines follow the link to the John Button Readers’ Award on ABR’s home page.

Organisers of the Inky Awards are also seeking voters – but only if you’re under 20 years of age. The Inky Awards honour young adult writing by Australian authors (the Gold Inky) and overseas writers (the Silver Inky). Voting closes on 27 October; a voting form is available on the Inkys website. (See Recent Literary Awards and Shortlists for details of the nominated Australian titles.)

Australian Literary Compendium
Co-ordinators of the Australian Literary Compendium are keen to hear from academics conducting research on Australian literature and/or those who are teaching Australian literature in university writing programs. The co-ordinators hope to feature information about current research on their website and to call on researchers for essays and articles relating to the Compendium’s programs. (AustLit is providing the biographies for the Compendium’s use.) Earlier in 2008 the Compendium developed a series of radio programs on well-known Australian poems (see ‘Slessor’s ‘Five Bells’ Still Sounding’ in the June-July AustLit newsletter) and a series on iconic Australian novels is now being prepared. In December 2008 a referred e-journal will be published on the Compendium’s website.

For further information contact the co-ordinators:
Professor Catherine Cole, Creative Writing, School of Creative Media, RMIT University
Email: catherine.cole@rmit.edu.au
Telephone: 03 9925 3714
or
Dr Lyn Gallacher
ABC Radio National
Email: gallacher.lyn@abc.net.au
Telephone: 03 9626 1655

‘Home and Away’: A Colloquium Honouring
Bruce Bennett, Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales at ADFA and inaugural chair of AustLit’s Advisory Board, will be honoured at a colloquium in Canberra on the 24th and 25th of October 2008. Speakers will include Helen Garner, Peter Porter, Frank Moorhouse, Alexis Wright, Michael Wilding, Peter Rose, Dewi Anggraeni and Satendra Nandan. Under the theme of ‘Home and Away’, they will discuss their identification with and depiction of place, region and community. The first day will be devoted to conversations among scholars and the second day to creative writers.

For a full list of speakers, details of registration and the full program, visit the conference website or contact:
Sandra Mason School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW@ADFA
Telephone: 02 6268 8894
Email: s.mason@adfa.edu.au
Fax: 02 6268 8879

‘Vincent Buckley 20 Years After: Life, Work, Politics and Times’
The Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) is holding a mini-conference celebrating the life, work, politics and times of Vincent Buckley. The conference, to be held at Newman College, University of Melbourne, 10-11 February 2009, will consider all aspects of the life of Vincent Buckley (1925-1988), including his poetry, criticism, polemics and influence, and the importance of his Irish background and religion.

The organising committee has issued a call for papers; they are interested in creative responses as well as academic papers. A 200-300 word abstract and a brief biographical note should be sent as an email attachment to bridie.mccarthy@vu.edu.au or by post to: Bridie McCarthy
SCA Arts
Victoria University Vic 8001

Submissions close on 14 November 2008. More information is available on ASAL’s website.

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

Magic Pudding Turns 90
‘Bunyip Bluegum and his Uncle are koalas.’ The uncle in question is Uncle Wattleberry whose whiskers were ‘the chief cause of Bunyip’s leaving home to see the world, for, as he often said to himself:

Whiskers alone are bad enough
Attached to faces coarse and rough
But how much greater their offence is
When stuck on Uncles' countenances.’

With this humorous introduction, Norman Lindsay set the scene for what was to become a classic children’s story, The Magic Pudding: Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and His Friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff. First published by Angus and Robertson in 1918, the Magic Pudding follows the escapades of a koala, a sailor and a penguin as they jaunt through the countryside eating and singing, but also creating the Pudding Owners' Collective to defend themselves against the wily Pudding Thieves.

The Norman Lindsay Gallery at Springwood, New South Wales, is celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Magic Pudding’s publication with a one day festival on 12 October. It is also hosting a special exhibition, Pudding Owners, Pudding Thieves and Friends: The Story of The Magic Pudding. The exhibition features reproduced illustrations from the Magic Pudding including a montage of the full set of 1960s watercolours. Foreign language editions and pudding ephemera will be on display along with a range of items for sale that have been specially created for the anniversary.

Lindsay’s granddaughter, artist Helen Glad, says: ‘The Magic Pudding is not only a beloved children’s book, it has truly become part of the Australian vernacular – with everything from the economy to Sydney real estate being described as a magic pudding. Norman would have been pleased knowing that he baked an artistic pudding big enough for everyone to enjoy’. (Norman Lindsay Gallery media release, 12 August 2008)

Angus and Robertson has published a new edition of The Magic Pudding to coincide with the 90th anniversary. The original artwork has been rescanned and the edition includes an afterword about Lindsay by Helen Glad and a range of correspondence between Lindsay and Angus and Robertson. At left: Cover image of the first edition of The Magic Pudding. Photo used with permission: Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum.

Patricia Rolfe (1920-2008)
When the Bulletin magazine came to an end in January 2008, Patricia Rolfe commented: ‘J. F. Archibald said the Bulletin was a clever youth but would become a dull old man. He was certainly right about that.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 2008) Rolfe was in a position to know; she had spent over three decades with the magazine as columnist, deputy editor and literary editor. During that time she mentored and befriended a succession of young journalists including Malcolm Turnbull, Bob Carr, David Marr, Sandra Hall and Diana Simmonds.

Simmonds says that ‘as a mentor Rolfe was second to none, although she didn’t see herself in the role. She was wise, calm, unmoved by fads and fancies and disdainful of show ponies. Her wit was sharp and her tongue deceptively acidic. She could deliver a criticism with the gentleness of a maiden aunt's pat on the head and the victim only realised they had been stabbed with a stiletto when they dropped dead a few minutes later.’ (Stage Noise, 28 August 2008)

Rolfe began her literary career with Frank Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press in the early 1950s. She worked initially on the Australian Women’s Weekly and was then sent to London as a foreign correspondent. On her return to she worked briefly at the Sydney Morning Herald but was soon recruited by Donald Horne to join the staff at the Bulletin. During her time as literary editor, Edmund Campion joined the Bulletin team. Campion recalls: ‘She ran a book column called Book Bulletin, which I think was the outstanding literary journalism in the country … Two things [struck me about her work]: her ability to see what a writer was about and her ability to say that, succinctly, swiftly and memorably.’ (Australian, 28 August 2008)

In 1980, to coincide with the Bulletin’s centenary, Rolfe wrote The Journalistic Javelin: An Illustrated History of the Bulletin. Throughout her career she also produced her own creative writing. Her 1965 novel No Love Lost dealt with the life of a female journalist in Australia and England. Her short stories, two of them prize-winning, were published in every decade from the 1960s through to a final contribution in Quadrant in April 2008.

Rolfe’s pithy aphorisms are still being shared with newcomers to journalism. Diana Simmonds (Stage Noise, 28 August 2008) is particularly fond of two: for those occasions when a writer is stuck, Rolfe recommended being open to new possibilities – ‘Open the window, the ravens will provide’ – and as a general reminder to not spend all day at the desk – ‘No one ever got a good idea by communing with a salad sandwich’.

Michael Pate (1920-2008)
Michael Pate was widely admired in and internationally as a film and television actor. Having begun his career in Australia, largely in radio and theatre and as a book and theatre critic, he left for the USA in 1950. In a period of nearly 20 years he acted in over 50 feature films and more than 300 television shows; he was often cast in westerns as an American Indian.

Pate also had a significant career in scriptwriting and film and television production. He wrote the script for The Mango Tree and also adapted Colleen McCullough’s novel Tim, for which he won a 1979 AWGIE Award. In 1997 Pater received the Medal of the Order of Australia for his ‘service to the performing arts as an actor, producer and writer for the Australian film, radio and television industries’.

Robin Levett (1925-2008)
Robin Levett’s was a life in many parts. She studied at the National Gallery School (Victoria); worked with the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service and British Signals Intelligence; bred, owned and raced horses; was a renowned traveller and hostess; and still found time in later life for writing. Levett published her autobiography, The Girls, in 1997 and wrote other non-fiction books on horse racing, fly fishing and civil war.

Levett’s obituarist Gerry Carman notes that the Melbourne Herald ‘named her book Bloodstock as the best book on Australian racing history. In her book about Kashmir, The Shikari, Levett covers two topics, fly-fishing and civil war. Some think it her finest book.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 16-17 August 2008) In her only novel Alice and Sin (1998), Levett stays close to her passion for horses. Alice and Sin tells the story of a horse substitution racket; the novel’s jacket states that the book is a work of ‘pure fiction’ while raising some doubt in the reader’s mind: ‘Alice’s scam with Lady is quite possible, and who knows if some such substitution may not have produced some champion in the past’.

Rosa Cappiello (1942-2008)
In an early review of Rosa Cappiello’s autobiography Paese Fortunato [Oh Lucky Country], Franco Schiavoni concludes: ‘I have no doubt that Lucky Country is a work of considerable value and maturity, deserving an immediate translation, possibly to an Irishman brought up in Leopold Bloom country, and also a film transposition. It is in many ways an uncomfortable text; yet, it unquestionably deserves an important place in Australian letters’. (Age Monthly Review, November 1982)

Cappiello was born in Italy and migrated to Australia in 1971. Her first novel, I Semi Negri [The Black Seeds] was published in her mother country in 1977; Paese Fortunato appeared four years later. According to Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, Paese Fortunato ‘became one of the central texts in discussions of “migrant writing” in Australian literature’. Professor Dixon and Bruce Bennett, Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales at ADFA, are currently working on a re-publication of Cappiello’s autobiography as part of Sydney University’s forthcoming Australian Classics Library.

In the early 1980s, Cappiello received several writers’ grants and was writer-in-residence at the University of Wollongong. Paese Fortunato won the 1981 Premio Calabria Prize (Italy) and the 1985 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Ethnic Writing.

Alan Becher (1947-2008)
The Perth Theatre Company (PTC) has farewelled a ‘much loved friend, colleague, mentor and director’. Alan Becher was artistic director at the company until his death in August. He was described by the company as ‘a true and vital artistic spirit’. (PTC website) Becher adapted and directed award-winning Western Australian plays. His adaptations and productions include ‘Stories from Suburban Road’, ‘Wild Cat Falling’ and ‘The Newspaper of Claremont Street’.

Toney Bonney, PTC general manager, highlights Becher’s impact on the careers of Western Australian playwrights, particularly through the development of The Writers’ Lab, a playwrights’ network designed to encourage new writing through readings, critiques and workshops. Bonney also acknowledges Becher’s legacy at the PTC; ‘Through him, our company has a reputation of doing the Australian canon well. He personally did the adaptations of, say, Elizabeth Jolley’s novels, [The] Newspaper of Claremont Street and Milk and Honey … I think he was most proud of works of that nature, stories about life on the streets of Western Australia rather than the rich epic novels of Australian life.’ (Australian, 18 August 2008)