Welcome to the third edition of Black Words E-News, keeping you up to date with what's happening in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing and storytelling around the country.

Black Words Coordinator, Dr Anita Heiss has recently returned from delivering the keynote address on Black Words at the Black Writers Reunion and Conference in Tampa, Florida. BWRC began as the annual gathering for members of the African American Online Writers Guild, an Internet-based association of aspiring and published creative writers, to facilitate their coming together to network in person and share knowledge and information on the craft and business of writing for publication. The inaugural event was in held August 2000, and this year it warmly welcomed learning about Australia's Indigenous writing and storytelling industry.

A blog by conference delegate Lauren Brown Jarvis on Anita's address quotes:

"Dr. Heiss spoke at great length about the struggle and disparity that Native Australians have experienced as a result of the invasion of their lands by settlers. She also highlighted a new cropping of literature written by native Australians, that narrates their experience in first person instead of third. I am really excited to delve in these works. Visit Black Words to engage in works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Writers and Story Tellers, and get the real Australian perspective."

Anita's attendance at the conference was made possible by a Professional Development Grant from the Copyright Agency Ltd.

As part of the CAL Professional Development Fund grant, Anita was also keynote speaker at the inaugural NAIDOC Week in New York events coordinated by the Australian Mission to the United Nations and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Her paper on the .Diversity and reality of Aboriginal Australia. made the point that while Aboriginal writers are part of the same national Indigenous community and the themes of our writing are often common - it is the way in which we write individual stories that varies greatly and demonstrates our diversity.

For example - we have the Aboriginal English voices of Ruby Langford Ginibi, Vivienne Cleven and Gayle Kennedy. We have the guerrilla poetry of Lionel Fogarty; we have the urban-based poetry of Samuel Wagan Watson and the performance poetry of Romaine Moreton. We have the work of Miles Franklin Award-winning author Alexis Wright who some believe pushed the literary boundaries in Australia with her epic novel Carpentaria in 2007.

And while we are all writers with many similarities, we have a wealth of life experiences that vary greatly. Our lives are the culmination of a diverse range of experiences that make us no more or less Indigenous than the next person.

For example, while we are poets, novelists, short story writers, auto biographers / biographers and essayists, we have been or continue to be lawyers, academics, filmmakers, dancers, stockmen and jillaroos, photographers, historians, salesmen, fraud investigators, graphic artists, labourers, actors, soldiers, fishermen and community volunteers.

And as writers we tell stories about metropolitan Brisbane, the women.s movement, homophobia, the stolen generations, relationships, community politics and history, and all of them from diverse Indigenous perspectives.

The interest in the Black Words dataset in New York was strong, and we hope that as more and more international audiences seek to learn more about Indigenous Australia, they do so through our literature.

It's very quiet in the Arts Faculty at the moment as it is mid-term break. I don't notice the students when they're around, but I notice their absence. Wollongong University hosted this years. ASAL conference and I attended the seminar where our own Kerry Kilner gave her paper on the way that AustLit data can be used. (I picked up a few hints too!) It was nice to see Kerry and Carol down here. (Sorry if the weather was a bit cool). A reading was scheduled for the Monday night of the ASAL conference. Merlinda Bobis, acting as chair, introduced the writers. Ernie Blackmore read from his play-turned-into-a-novel work-in-progress which was well-received, especially when the welfare officer lost her teeth. Tara June Winch read from her soon to be published work, as well as keeping her toddler from stealing the limelight. At one point Tara was holding daught on her hip with her left hand, the mike in her right hand, her knees bent while she held her book open with her right elbow and still reading - now there's a woman who can multi-task! And I read from my David Unaipon collection. The two other readers were Pham Hoa and Hsu-ming Teo both reading from their recent publications.

In terms of my Black Words indexing - I've been going through the Aboriginal Women's & Men's Heritage series from around NSW, tracking down bios, info and anything else I can put onto the AustLit page - and I love it!

I recently attended the Indigenous Studies & Indigenous Knowledge Conference (ISIK) conference at the University of Tasmania. This was a particularly interesting and captivating conference with keynote speakers of the calibre of Martin Nakata and Aileen Moreton-Robinson who together with Tom Calma provided plenty to think about and reminded us that there is a mile of research out there still to be done, papers and books to be written and pieces of theatre waiting for performance. While this may not add to the current work being done on the Black Words sub-set, it is clear that a case can be made for the preservation of the services we've so far been able to facilitate with a great deal of pride.

The amount of work currently under production and the promise for the future must surely give us heart that black words by blackfellas have a great deal to give, as they have for millennia, to the peoples of one of the oldest of countries in this world.

In the past month I have perused many books in the name of research for Black Words and the one that stood out the most was Audrey Evans Many Lifetimes (2006). Evans wrote her memoirs for her Masters thesis but passed away before she could see it published. There is a softness to her writing juxtaposed by the harshness of her childhood and young adult life. The events in Evans' life reveal her strength and will even when she did not believe she had it. Reading her book is an experience, one that needs to be mulled over, breathed in and exhaled slowly.

NAIDOC has come and gone and I only managed to get to two events - one was the march through Adelaide and the free BBQ at Elder Park, the other was the book launch of Doreen Kartinyeri: My Ngarrindjeri Calling by Doreen Kartinyeri and Sue Anderson. The launch was held in Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Inc. film hall. The Master of Ceremony was Flinders University Associate Professor Lester-Irabinna Rigney, whose sister was married to Kartinyeri's son. There were around 60 to 70 people at the launch, not just random strangers but family, friends and work mates of Doreen Kartinyeri, a testament to the Ngarrindjeri woman who passed away in December 2007. Many of Adelaide.s Indigenous Elders were there including Lowitja O'Donahue, Lewis O'Brien and Doris Kartinyeri. The book launch was a success enjoyed by all who attended.

Well, as predicted, the month of July has proven to be a jam-packed month for us Black Worders, the data-entry into our Black Words subset is swelling with a magnetic infusion of poetry and selected works by a multitude of Indigenous Australian talent. The coming together of NAIDOC celebrations is as much a highlight on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social events calendar as is any other national celebration; this year's theme was titled 'Advance Australia Fair'. On 9th July, I was invited along with Jeanine Leane (Canberran academic and poet) to co-present the keynote address for the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs NAIDOC Week in our nation's capital Ngunnawal Land (Canberra). The title of my presentation was called 'Closing the Gap with Cultural Knowledge - Advancing Indigenous Australian Literature'.

Some of the highlights from my presentation included:

• Advancing Australia Fair - the preservation of Indigenous Australia literature, language and cultural knowledge;
• Exploring the diversity within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander .storytelling'.

Black Words has been busy developing a comprehensive range of relevant hotlinks that you can go to directly from our site. The new addition to the site includes links to Indigenous publishers, cultural centres, individual author websites and more. Check them out at http://www.austlit.edu.au/specialistDatasets/BlackWords/BlackWordsHotlinks.

Unfortunately, Josie Harp has departed the UWA post and we are looking for another staff member for Western Australia. Stay tuned for the position description.