About 200 people gathered at the National Library of Australia in Canberra on 27 August for the formal launch of AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway. Amongst those in attendance were writers, academics, librarians and IT specialists as well as past and present members of the dispersed AustLit team.

AustLit was launched by the Honourable Dr Brendan Nelson, Minister for Education, Science & Training [ photo]. Declaring AustLit an 'Australian first', Dr Nelson drew attention to the Gateway's status 'as a unique website which will enhance research and learning in literature for the whole community'. He also highlighted the excellence of AustLit as an example of research collaboration across the Australian higher education sector.

Giving full support to Dr Nelson's accolades were the Director General of the National Library of Australia, Jan Fullerton; prominent Canberra and Australian writer, Marion Halligan; and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland, Professor John Hay.

Ms Fullerton drew attention to the inter-operability functions that AustLit provides with the National Library's Bibliographic database, Kinetica; the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts (RAAM); and the Pictures Catalogue. Ms Halligan delighted in the ability of AustLit to provide a record of an author's complete output (including some items that may have been long forgotten by the writer). Professor Hay focused on the drawing together within AustLit of the various research projects that had previously been scattered and disconnected throughout the country. Professor Hay [photo] also highlighted the need for further funding during the next few years to ensure that AustLit reaches its potential. He emphasised that the goal of a comprehensive coverage of the literary production of Australian writers and literary critics would only be reached with support from the government and university sectors.

A number of photographs were taken at the Launch to commemorate the event, please see our AustLit Launch album for details.

A burst of media attention has resulted from the launch with Kerry Kilner, AustLit's Executive Manager, being interviewed a number of times about the benefits of AustLit to research and teaching. News of the launch has appeared in a variety of media sources:

• print (The Australian, 'Higher Education Supplement', 28 August 2002)
• electronic (UQ News online)
• broadcast (radio station 2CC, Canberra and the Australian Community Radio network. An additional interview will be broadcast on ArtSound FM on 22 September.)

Just prior to the launch an article by Dr Marie-Louise Ayres, AustLit's original Project Manager, appeared in the August issue of Australian Book Review under the title 'National News'.

As we mentioned in our last newsletter, the AustLit team is widely dispersed across the country. Team members work together to contribute their indexing, bibliographic and research knowledge and expertise to provide AustLit users with valuable information relating to Australian authors and their writings from the 1780s to the present day.

In this newsletter we would like to introduce you to the Queensland based members of the team.

University of Queensland

The team members based at the University of Queensland are:

• Kerry Kilner has been Executive Manager of AustLit since late February 2002, following her incumbency as Content Manager from AustLit's inception. Kerry has an MA in Women's Studies (Monash University) and has been involved with bibliographic research for about 10 years. She was responsible for the compilation of From Page to Stage: An Annotated Bibliography of Australian Drama, which formed the foundation of the AustLit Australian Drama subset. Kerry was also a co-compiler of The Bibliography of Australian Literature : A-E. While being on a very steep learning curve since taking over as Manager of AustLit, Kerry is thoroughly excited by the possibilities presented by web-based resource discovery and believes the future will see greater improvements in service and coverage.


• Carol Hetherington has a B.A. (Hons) in English (University of Tasmania). Since graduating she has worked in various positions as a teacher, research assistant, bibliographer and librarian, both in Australia and overseas. Her association with the University of Queensland stretches back to 1972 and includes work in the Fryer Library and the Department of English. Carol joined AustLit as a bibliographer in February 2001 and took up the position of Content Manager in March 2002. She also continues to work as a bibliographer and editorial assistant for Australian Literary Studies.
• Joan Keating has been working in a variety of bibliographic research areas including the Australian Drama subset and the Bibliography of Australian Literature project. Joan has worked for many years in the University of Queensland Library (and for a brief time at the James Cook University library in Townsville), spending much of that time in the Fryer Library. Joan continues to have a high level of responsibility for AustLit's coverage of Australian drama.
• Irmtraud Petersson joined AustLit as a part-time Senior Researcher in 2001. Since coming to Australia in 1984 she has specialised in Australian literature. Irmtraud has been a co-compiler of the ALS Annual Bibliography of Studies in Australian Literature since 1988 and an Editorial Assistant of Australian Literary Studies since 1989. She taught Australian literature at the University of Queensland for several years. Irmtraud has an MA (Munich, Germany) and a PhD, German Images in Australian Literature from the 1940s to the 1980s (University of Queensland).
• Elizabeth (Liz) Hardy has a B.A. (Hons) (University of Western Australia) majoring in Literature. Both her Honours dissertation and PhD thesis focused on novels by Peter Carey. While pursuing her doctoral studies, Liz also completed diplomas in Information and Library Studies, and in Journalism. Liz works largely in the area of author-centred research, ensuring comprehensive coverage of individual author's works and biographical details.
• Leila Ismail is an anthroplogy graduate currently enrolled in a law degree at the University of Queensland. She works on a casual basis for AustLit and the University of Queensland Library.

The UQ team is ably assisted by staff at the UQ Library and takes pride in the work they do to further the aims of the AustLit enterprise.

In coming newsletters we will be introducing you to our contributors from the other partner institutions: Monash University; Flinders University of South Australia, University of Western Australia, Deakin University and the University of Sydney. Canberra members of the team from the University of Canberra and the University of New South Wales at ADFA were introduced in the July/August newsletter.

AustLit Personal Alert Service

The AustLit Personal Alert Service allows you to define up to 10 different searches to find newly added or updated records of interest to you.

Typical uses of the Personal Alert Service could be to inform you of:

• new works by Thomas Keneally
• new critical works about Peter Carey's writing
• new picture books by women
• new poems about 'Politics & government' or narrower topics

Searches are automatically executed by the system using the criteria YOU nominate and the results of the searches are emailed to your specified mail address.

The Personal Alert Service allows you to choose:

• the frequency of the search - either weekly or monthly
• whether you are only interested in new works added to AustLit, or whether you are also interested in tracking updates made to exsiting works
• whether you want to be notified only when something is found matching your search criteria, or whether you also want to be notified even when there are no (ie. null) results.

Registration information and instructions for the Personal Alert Service are available at: http://www.austlit.edu.au/sdi.

One Book One Brisbane
The One Book One Brisbane project was launched by the Brisbane City Council in August. The project aims to create a common topic of discussion among residents of Brisbane by encouraging everyone to read the same book at the same time. Partners and sponsors in the project are the University of Queensland Press, The Courier-Mail and Conrad Treasury Brisbane. The first title chosen for the project is Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang.

Project events to date have included a seminar at the Brisbane Institute with Peter Carey and various adult education talks and book discussions. Events will continue through September and October and will include a panel discussion at the Brisbane Writers Festival where the meaning of True History of the Kelly Gang will be debated. Further information can be found on Brisbane City Council's website.

Poor Fellow My Country Dust Jacket Painting Donated

The Fryer Library at the University of Queensland received the gift of a Ray Crooke painting from Mr Ken Wilder and Mrs Jean Wilder in early August. The painting was originally commissioned by William Collins Publishers Ltd for the jacket of Poor Fellow My Country and presented to Ken Wilder, Managing Director of Collins, when he retired. The gift has been donated to the Library in memory of the Wilder's son, Christopher.

The Fryer Library holds a significant collection of Xavier Herbert papers including notebooks, drafts, proofs and other records relating to Poor Fellow My Country. The University of Queensland Press has very recently published a selection from these papers in a volume edited by Laurie Hergenhan and Frances De Groen. In Xavier Herbert : Letters, the editors have also included a glossary, biographical notes on correspondents and notes on persons mentioned in the letters.

ANU Residential Block Honours Judith Wright
A new student residence at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra has been named in honour of Judith Wright. The new building was unveiled by conservationist and singer, Peter Garrett on 2 September. Opening the building, Garrett spoke of Wright as 'an impeccable activist'. The residence is intended to support scholarly endeavour in a beautiful environment and will be aided by the establishment of a scholarship fund to advance the cause of indigenous students, particularly females.

The Age Book of the Year Award
The Fiction Prize for this year's Age Book of the Year Award was won by Joan London for Gilgamesh, with the Dinny O'Hearn Poetry Prize going to Robert Gray for Afterimages.

The Non-Fiction Award, and the overall Book of the Year, went to Don's Watson's political memoir of the Keating government, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart.

Ned Kelly Awards for Australian Crime Writing

The Crime Writers' Association of Australia announced the winners of this year's Ned Kelly Awards for Australian Crime Writing in Melbourne on 29 August.

Winners in the Fiction sections for 2002 are:

• Best Crime Novel to Gabrielle Lord for Death Delights
• Best Young Adult Crime Novel to New Zealand writer Ken Catran for Blue Murder
• Best First Crime Novel awarded jointly to Bunty Avieson for Apartment 255 and Emma Darcy for Who Killed Angelique?

For Gabrielle Lord, a crime writer for over 20 years with 10 published novels, the award is her first literary prize. Lord's first book, Fortress appeared in 1980 and has been re-published five times. Fortress , along with Lord's 1992 novel, Whipping Boy, has been adapted for film.

Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA)
Winners of this year's Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards were announced in Perth on 16 August. A week prior to the announcement Meg Sorensen, children's book editor at The Sydney Morning Herald, took issue with recent trends in Australian children's writing. She said that 'after a long invasion by do-gooders, the world of children's books is now being colonised by adults.' Sorensen contended that via text and illustrations, children were being "pictured" as passive, isolated and powerless. For more information see 'Where Have All the Dragons Gone?'.

The 2002 winners are:

• Book of the Year Older Readers to Sonya Hartnett for Forest
• Book of the Year Younger Readers to John Heffernan and Andrew McLean for My Dog
This book also received an Honour Book award in the Picture Book of the Year category.
• Book of the Year Early Childhood to Bob Graham for Let's Get a Pup
• Picture Book of the Year to Libby Gleeson and Armin Greder for An Ordinary Day
• Eve Pownall Award for Information Books to the Papunya School Publishing Committee for Papunya School Book of Country and History
• Crichton Award to Mini Goss for When Mum was Little

Full details of all winners including recipients of Honour Book awards can be found on the Children's Book Council of Australia web site or by conducting an Advanced search on AustLit. (To construct the search, choose the work attribute 'Work Award Year' and insert the year: 2002; then choose the work attribute 'Work Award' and insert the phrase: children's book council of australia). This search will retrieve winning and honour books, and shortlisted works. A similar search can be constructed to display winning and shortlisted works for other years or for multiple years.

Kate Challis RAKA Award
The Kate Challis RAKA Award follows a five-year cycle of recognising Aboriginal creative artists in the fields of creative prose, drama, the visual arts, scriptwriting and poetry. In 2002 the featured art form was drama and for the first time the award was made to joint recipients. This year's winners are:

• Jane Harrison for Stolen
and
• Dallas Winmar for Aliwa

The runner-up is:
• Richard Frankland for Conversations with the Dead

Shifting from Fiction to Non-Fiction
In her new collection of essays, Timepieces, Drusilla Modjeska argues that readers are currently engaged in a shift from fiction towards 'literary non-fiction'. While previous generations were caught up in the imaginative worlds of novels, Modjeska contends that today's readers are turning to "reality". As post-modern fiction detaches itself 'more and more from local realities and local experience', a space has been created for reflective non-fiction. According to Modjeska, current publications in the field of biography and memoir are marked 'not only by the recounting of personal or family experience but reflection, or meditation, on that experience. It is more interested in posing the questions than in finding the answers.'

'Cherishing the Art of Creativity', Michael McGirr's review of Arnold Zable's The Fig Tree demonstrates this point. McGirr says that Zable's collection comprises 'true stories about family and travel, belonging and dislocation. They are as shapely as fiction and as stirring as fact.' Similarly, in her review column, 'Paperbacks, 6 July 2002', Samela Harris says of The Washerwoman's Dream : The Extraordinary Life of Winifred Steger 1882-1981 by Hilarie Lindsay that 'this biography could pass as a novel'.

AustLit's scope policy in relation to Australian life-writing and literary non-fiction is currently being reviewed. An expansion of our coverage in this field will occur in the near future. AustLit aims to ensure that we provide information that is relevant to our users and responds to the shifting boundaries of literary works and imagination.

Other 2002 publications in this biography/memoir genre include:

Two Aboriginal life narratives

• Black Chicks Talking by Leah Purcell. A conversation conducted by Purcell with Aboriginal women from varying backgrounds and with diverse life experiences
.
• A Little Bird Told Me : Family Secrets, Necessary Lies by Lynette Russell, Director of the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies at Monash University
.

Other biographical voices

• Letters from Our Heart by Jennifer Campbell. A collection of letters by ordinary and prominent Australian people dating back to the 1790s.
• Faith : Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist by Marilyn Lake. An account of Bandler's family history and her involvement in the political life of Australia.
• Children of the Shadows : Voices of the Second Generation edited by Kathy Grinblat. A collection focusing on the lives of Jewish Australians whose parents emigrated after surviving the Holocaust.
• Feathers of the Snow Angel : Memories of a Child in Exile by Lionel Pearce. A poignant memoir by one of the children 'transported' to work farms in Western Australia in the early 1930s.
• The Philosopher's Dog by Raimond Gaita. A discussion of the complex questions surrounding the relationship of humans with other animals.

The nature of Australian identity in relation to landscape and place

• In Sunshine or In Shadow by Martin Flanagan. A re-visiting of Flanagan's Irish heritage and convict roots, interwoven with Aboriginal history and a Tasmanian locale.
• Words for Country : Landscape and Language in Australia by Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths. This book falls outside the biography/memoir genre, but is a non-fiction exploration of the inter-relation between Australia's landscape and language.

Dorothy Hewett
On 25 August, renowned playwright, novelist and poet, Dorothy Hewett died in Springwood Hospital in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales at the age of 79. A West Australian by birth and primary identity and an avowed atheist, Hewett was buried in the Springwood Bushland Cemetery on 30 August in a ceremony without religious overtones. Following the burial, a celebratory wake was held in the gardens of the Varuna Writers' Centre.

In the short time since Hewett's death, memorial functions have been held in several Australian cities and others are planned. A range of writers, literary critics and politicians have spoken of their admiration and respect for Hewett. They have emphasised the quality and versatility of her writing and her personal warmth, irreverence, passion and wit. More than a dozen obituaries have been published to date in Australian newspapers.

AustLit has indexed over 600 individual works by Hewett including her most famous and controversial epic theatre piece about the modern woman, The Chapel Perilous, or, The Perilous Adventures of Sally Banner, the 1979 musical The Man from Mukinupin : A Musical Play in Two Acts and the 1987 poetry sequence Alice in Wormland. In 1993, Hewett returned to novel writing after a 30 year hiatus with The Toucher, another controversial examination of women's sexuality, this time from the perspective of an older woman. Hewett's most recent novel was Neap Tide, published in 1999; the same year as The Vulgar Press' 40th anniversary edition of her classic Australian working class novel Bobbin Up : A Novel. Hewett never baulked at exploring risky or difficult areas and regularly mined her own life's experiences for her art, which on occasion embroiled her in legal proceedings. Her collection of poetry Rapunzel in Suburbia was banned in Western Australia for many years after Hewett's first husband, Lloyd Davies, successfully sued Hewett for libel over a poem entitled 'Uninvited Guest'.

Hewett was awarded Western Australian Premier's Book Awards for her poetry in 1994, 1996 and 2001. Her autobiography, Wildcard : An Autobiography, 1923-1958, won both a Western Australian Premier's Book Award and a Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Other multi-award winning works were the short story collection A Bakers' Dozen and the poetry collection Peninsula.

John Iremonger
Remembered as a remarkable publisher and editor, John Iremonger died from cancer on 21 August 2002. Iremonger was a highly influential publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences fields, in some measure shaping Australians' perceptions of their history, culture and political life. Iremonger was founding editor of the ANU Historical Journal and, with Sylvia Hale, established the Sydney-based publishing house, Hale & Iremonger in 1977. During the 1980s and for part of the 1990s Iremonger was based at Allen & Unwin. He also worked with University of Queensland Press and Melbourne University Press.

Continually active in cultural circles, Iremonger was a member of the National Advisory Council of the ABC, the Australian Museum and the Literature Board of the Australia Council. He was also a president of the Library Society in NSW. In 2001, Iremonger received a Doctorate of Letters from the University of Melbourne.

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