reeling and writhing

speaking of emerging writers...Chris Meade and others report

It is such a pleasure to see video making its way into reportage from the truly excellent Emerging Writers' Festival - three cheers for director Lisa Dempster who has been packing her video camera every day. Here's Chris Meade from if:book London (who clearly packs a camera as well), interviewing Lisa earlier this week (taken from his blog BookFutures.)
Meade has another video at that post, and earlier on the blog has reported on the Bloggers' Brunch and the festival. The very fine discussion at the Brunch on digital publishing and writing futures is still open for latecomers (you will see me promising to come back if you get to the end of it...obviously I didn't quite make it.)

Meade is posting more videos later this week, so clearly the festival made a good impression. Go EWF team.

Update: I did say others - here is Andrew Wrathall at Fancy Goods, the Bookseller & Publisher blog, with a terrific wrap of events up to Friday 28th. The weekend is still to come...hoping to get to hear Jill Jones tomorrow, and see Derek Motion pick up the Overland Poetry Prize. That's my Saturday.

writers are emerging all over Melbourne this weekend...so be there

The Emerging Writers' Festival is kicking off in Melbourne this weekend, with the official opening tomorrow night at BMW Edge (at time of writing, there were a couple of tickets left to this.)

The First Word is …
A celebration of writing, writers and the word.

A night of performance, comedy, spoken word and burlesque.

The official opening of the 7th Emerging Writers’ Festival.

The First Word is …

Dance, comedy, readings and…

The Call to Arms – the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s unique keynote address, this year delivered by romantic fiction writer Toni Jordan.

The Glory of Love – Craig Schuftan.

Love Vs Angst, what makes a better writer? – top writers Josh Earl, Kate Mclennan and Michaela McGuire battle for supremacy in our 2 Sides of the Coin debate.

For a bunch of fascinating events this weekend, scroll down that page, or click here for the full and burgeoning program of festival events over the next nine days.

If you're struggling to get to everything you want to, check out the EWF Online program to see what you can do via your modem. The festival events are, as usual, very moderately priced - and of course, the online program is completely free.

Let the games begin...

a new book to borrow at EWF - Chris Meade

News has come from the Emerging Writers' Festival  of a surprise addition to the Living Library program - Chris Meade:

Digital publishing: Chris Meade
Chris is Co-Director for the Institute for the Future of the Book in London. 

His particular interest is publishing and writing in the digital age.  Previously he was Director of the Poetry Society where he set up the Poetry Café in Covent Garden and the lottery funded Poetry Places project.

In the 1980s he was a pioneer of reader development, promoting public libraries as 'imagination services'.

Chris is the author of The Thoughts of Betty Spital (Penguin 1989) and a past winner of the George Orwell award for his play ‘We Two Boys’.

He is a member of Friendly Literature Organisations (FLO), a consortium supported by Arts Council England with whom he has been exploring the creative potential of new media for readers and writers.

Chris Meade will only be available for eight mentoring sessions so get in quick!

Booking details here. UPDATE: Meade will also be involved in another event at EWF. Details to follow. (I have been told I will like it.It doesn't get more enticing than that.)

salt from the Murray's mouth on the Anzac weekend

Yes, there was a lot going on in Victoria this weekend for booklovers, with the Clunes Booktown event on the same weekend as the Williamstown Literary Festival. But I am still catching up with what went down in Goolwa, SA, on the Anzac Day weekend at the Australian Poetry Centre's national festival, Salt On The Tongue.

Thanks to poet-bloggers who attended for these timely reports:

• Jennifer Mills can bring us up to speed with her great podcast page, Sound Atlas, made with other poets walking through the town over festival weekend.
• Jill Jones has put up a post (and in other posts, recommends several new books)
• Graham Nunn at Another Lost Shark (thanks to Ralph Wessman at Currajah for the link to those posts of Graham's), blogging his days at Goolwa Parts 1 and Part 2.
• Tamryn of the RedRoom company has given her impressions, mentioning that new poems of Lisa Gorton's were given an airing at the Giramondo Poets session.

And that's about all Google can find for me, but I will let you know if more reports come to light. I'm sure there will be reports at the APC's site at some stage as well.

Calibre prize is shared again

The news is out and about. The winners of the Calibre Prize for essay writing awarded annually by Australian Book Review were officially announced at a conference in Canberra yesterday.

The $10,000 prize, judged by ABR editor Peter Rose and James Ley, will be once more shared between two winners, Doctor Lorna Hallahan for her essay "On Being Odd" and Doctor David Hansen for "Seeing Truganini". (2010 marks the third year in a row that this fairly new prize has been shared.) The media release is here.

In other ABR related news, editor Peter Rose will read his poetry at Readings bookshop on May 10 as part of Readings' regular poetry event, Pages to Poetry, along with fellow poets Susan Hawthorne and Michael Farrell.

it's (all) news to me 27.04.10

The Emerging Writers' Festival program for 2010 is up and at 'em, so go and see what you will be attending towards the end of this month. Thanks to a website revamp under the eagle eye of new director Lisa Dempster, it's a lot easier to see what's going on this year at this incredibly well-priced festival, and I will be posting later on the week on events that have caught my eye.

This is now fairly old news, but... the graffiti artist Banksy had a film opening in the US on the 16th of this month. 

Fresher news comes via Bob Stein of a new article by CraigMod on e-readers, Embracing The Digital Book, following up on his widely read piece on books and the iPad last month.

Most of the news this Tuesday centres on that celebrated member of the linkerati, George Dunford. George has very graciously blogged his Big Issue profile of Anna Dusk at Hackpacker, and has a few remarks on the future of graphic novels up at Readings, where I found out that Paul Auster's City Of Glass also exists as a graphic novel. By the time this is posted I reckon a copy will be on its way to me, thanks to Visa.

George ran a couple of panels at the Wheeler Centre's graphic novels events on the weekend. And introduced me to Oslo Davis last Thursday at the Emerging Writers' Festival launch, to which I swear I went to support my blog friend-the-director, not to meet graphic arts heroes. It is not news, either, that Oslo's Sunday cartoon for the Age, Overheard, will soon appear as a book. One of the finest Christmas presents you could buy.

The calendar at the Wheeler Centre now includes full details of the Deakin Lectures for 2010, focussed fairly and squarely on climate change (there was a splendid two -page spread on this in the Saturday paper as well):

Curated by Professor Tim Flannery, we’ve gathered 30 of the best people addressing the climate problem now. These aren’t the usual suspects spouting fixed positions. At the Deakins you’ll hear from practitioners, from fresh informed voices with practical experience of achieving emissions reduction. These are people working to innovate in policy, business, finance and new technologies to help create a brave, new, low emissions world.

Finally, for those of us who haven't already seen Curious Pages,  here's what John Williams at the Second Pass had to say about the blog on 'recommended inappropriate children's books' earlier and later this year.

it's news to me 19.04.10

I am  just wondering if anyone can shed some light on this. I bookmarked it a while ago and have been wondering whether it stalled or no.

Something of Clive's about Les that I must read.

As reported by Darcy Moore a couple of weeks ago, the first trailer of the film of John Marsden's excellent novel, Tomorrow When The War Began, is now available.

This film of a talk by Richard Nash on book publishing comes thoroughly recommended by Chris Anderson, Wired editor and author of the seminal text The Long Tail. He was very effusive about it on Twitter the other day, calling it the 'best post on the future of books and publishing I've ever seen'.

The Dublin Impac shortlist is out. And speaking of shortlists, it is nice to see Karen Hitchcock's tight and edgy first collection of stories on this one, in some good company.

Kerryn informs us that the latest issue of JASAL is a special issue dedicated to the memory of Australian poet Vincent Buckley.

Finally, I was delighted by the snippets of this interview I heard last week with recently deceased Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar on Margaret Throsby's morning interview show, and am looking forward to listening to the lot today. Aaah technology, iz waking up the dead.

Shaun Tan at the Wheeler Centre this weekend

via wheelercentre.com

Where else, I ask, will you get to hear Shaun Tan give a free keynote address on graphic novels and attend a weekend of graphic storytelling related events?
At the Wheeler Centre on the Anzac Day weekend, that's where.

Saturday sees a bunch of panels led by luminaries of the art such as Bruce Mutard, Nicki Greenberg, Tan, Dylan Horrocks and Oslo Davis, while on Sunday there are some very reasonably priced workshops with practitioners such as Bernard Caleo, of Tango fame.

I'm only providing a couple of links today - I would love the Wheeler Centre to provide 'one link to rule them all, one link to find them' - somewhere in that calendar AND Thank you for your comment, Mim, for THERE IT IS NOW!! and doesn't that look a lot better. I like that.  I'll just begin at the beginning, and You can scroll down to find the rest.

some cross-Pacific reading for the weekend

Alongside the Sydney Writers' Festival program (if you haven't already had a peep online), you can also read the Atlantic's 2010 Fiction issue online (click on the cover above). As noted by John Williams at The Second Pass, there's an article there by Richard Bausch about books that tell us how to write, as well as many other things. (I have bookmarked an essay by Joyce Carol Oates.)
Enjoy.

a shortlist of a certain calibre from Australian Book Review

The shortlist for Australian Book Review's CAL-sponsored Calibre Prize for an essay, carrying a prize of ten grand, has been announced. From the media release:

SHORTLISTED ESSAYS
Lindsay Barrett: 'The Shadow on the Steps'
Janene Carey: 'Retreat to the Castle'
Eleanor Collins: 'Ill-Timed Remarks: A Pathographical Essay'
Lorna Hallahan: 'On Being Odd'
David Hansen: 'Seeing Truganini'
Colin Nettelbeck: 'Kneecapper: A Trip to Happiness'
Jessica White: 'Hearing in Other Ways'


The winner will be announced at the conclusion of a day-long symposium on
the art of essay writing to be held at the National Library of Australia on
Friday, April 30.
Robert Dessaix is the keynote speaker. The five previous Calibre winners
will all speak: Kevin Brophy, Jane Goodall, Elisabeth Holdsworth, Rachel
Robertson and
Mark Tredinnick.

This is a free event, but bookings are essential: (02) 6262 1271 or
bookings@nla.gov.au

a little news for the not so new year

Some writing news: the Queensland Writers' Centre has moved into the State Library of Queensland, joining a hub of writerly organisations which will also house the Queensland branch of the Institute for the Future of the Book when it opens. Details here.

It's official (and reworded, yes, thanks for the correction): the Emerging Writers' Festival  director for 2010 is Lisa Dempster. Hearty congratulations to editor, publisher and author Lisa, whose travel book Neon Pilgrim  I wrote about last year.

Richard Nash has been writing on what publishing will look like in 10 years time, for Galleycat.

From writing, to film - we all got our fill of 2009 lists I'm sure, over the break - however Mr Celluloid Tongue has more, probably some lists you will like. Good to see Spotless Mind and The Proposition up there - the much-praised film of Sweeney Todd I have yet to see, though I saw a bloodcurdling amateur production in 2008. Gore in operas I can handle, but I do not like my musicals steeped in it, I'm afraid.

Finally, thanks to John Williams of The Second Pass for this site, which he says is updated 'far too infrequently for my taste, but it's always worth the wait'.

Melbourne Prize runaway for Murnane, Le

Readings bookshop had the announcement up before the Melbourne Prize Trust did. Congratulations to both winners: richly deserved. I am sure Mr Miller will carry it off another day.

(Note: I'm sure the reference on the Readings website will be rephrased speedily, but not all of Murnane's works are actually available from the Readings catalogue at this point in time. There are two other titles available as POD from Sydney University Press, here,  but at least two other short story collections, Emerald Blue and Velvet Waters, are currently out of print. I do hope plans are afoot to change that tout de suite.)

PS I won't re-edit this again - apologies to readers of feeds, I'll be a cleaner blogger from now on.

Patrick White award to Beverley Farmer

Ralph at Currajah was very quick off the mark last weekend! picking up the news of Beverley Farmer being awarded the Patrick White prize, and spreading the love, along with her misgivings (see Susan Wyndham's report, here).

(If you cannot read that bio on Austlit because you are not a subscriber, you should be able to join using a public library card, or a State Library one. Or you can read this older bio by Laurie Clancy, with some good notes on her books, which does not include her latest publication, The Bone House.)

One of my favourite books is Farmer's collection of diary extracts and short stories, collected mainly around their writing, A Body Of Water. There is a story about a Buddhist retreat in that volume, complete with a diary account of the retreat, that provides a magnificent study in how to render fiction out of memory.

Farmer is a prose poet in many ways - from her notes from October in that book comes this account of reading at Mietta's, a fine restaurant with literary leanings, at some time in the eighties:

Heat and sun for the first day of daylight saving. I read a story in the "Readings with Readings" program in the Lounge at Mietta's, among the fringed lamps, clustered gold bubbles of light overhead, black statues bearing flowers - heat and smoke drifting. The dappled grey marble of the round tables, bright with the light of wineglasses.

At seven o'clock tall buildings still reached up into the sun.

In the livid night sky - never black in Carlton - a crescent moon lay on its back holding a smaller moon clasped, a dim full one. (On top of a stupa they have an orb in a cusp.)

Further up that page, she writes of a house she had rented by the coast, somewhere near Lorne:

Skirting the full frog pond with a chilly scud across it, over the road and dunes you go down onto the surf beach. The tea-trees up there in the dune-folds are whiskery knuckles, leafless and lichen-splattered, scraping the sand. Though the sea is so near, there's not a whisper of it, as if this really were another time.

I liked living back there, deep in the tea-tree. Glaneuse Road: after the French barque Glaneuse, wrecked off the surf beach in 1886 with her bottles of contraband cognac. (And Glaneuse, gleaner: what I was and am.) For those six months I was suspended out of time in a glass lantern, not swinging - still, somewhere between two seasons. An old life, a new.

From A Body Of Water, UQP: 1990, p.188 (the one with the Matisse painting on the cover, yesss. Iss mine, preciousss.) A volume of Farmer's longer, meditative essays on art and life, The Bone House, is available from Giramondo. I don't know how many of her other books are in print - her Collected Stories have been on school reading lists from time to time. She spoke with Clive Hamilton and Alfred Yuson on Radio National's Book Show on the art of the essay in 2006 and a podcast is still available, here. I have also found an essay in Island from 2005, 'The Dog Of The Work', in my travels...Enjoy.

Prime Minister's literary awards are in

Finally. The news is out on this year's PM's literary awards.

Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett has just announced the winners of the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

The winner of the 2009 Fiction award is Nam Le for his book of short stories The Boat. The judging panel was impressed by the daring scope and excellence of its execution, the generous breadth of its emotional and social traverse and the excitement generated by every story.

In 2009, two books and three authors share the Non-Fiction award. The winners are Evelyn Juers for House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann; and Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds for Drawing the Global Colour Line.

Both books explore important racial, moral and political issues of Australia's past. The Non-Fiction judging panel said "With great intellectual authority and international research Evelyn Juers, Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds tell their stories magnificently."

The link for this Bookforum review of The Boat comes from Nam Le's reviews page on his website - scroll right on down...

The most recent Latrobe University Bulletin  carried these remarks on Reynolds' and Lake's prizewinning book, here, and the Cambridge University Press catalogue entry includes (somewhat chunky bits of) reviews. 

And my March '09 review of House of Exile, with links to other sources, is here.

poetry in the corner, in the spotlight or underground

I was quite moved by this post by George Szirtes on his recent involvement in the Best Poems from the London Underground anthology launch:

In bookshops there is usually the poetry corner about which Kingsley Amis once wrote a funny poem, 'A Bookshop Idyll', before turning his attention to fiction. There is, for all kinds of reasons, something coyly cornerish about Poets' Corner. Sensitives retire there in varying states of tremulousness: the robustly healthy avoid it as if it were a source of potential weakening or embarrassment. The common-sense disciples of straight-speaking and simple man-ness avoid it because it is for clever intellectual types who'll only make them feel inferior and dumb. Fancy talk for the fancy minded.

People, on the whole, only go there if it is what they already want: the corner offers a specialism, like turnip growing or vintage trains...
What is marvellous about Poems on the Underground is that it takes poetry out of the corner (I know, I live in the corner, am of it, and love it because how can you not love being with what you love?) and floats it into the very air. It is there among crowds, among advertisements, among newspapers, public notices, maps, graffiti, above the issues of London Lite and the Evening Standard. It is not in a corner. People glance up and there it is. Just a few lines of it. And those lines are doing something that nothing around them does. They hold the air. They engage an unprepared part of them (of me, of us, of you) just as the poem itself must enter the world a little unprepared, always a little surprised at itself. They engage the place we know exists within us, that rises out of all we are to meet them.

I have reluctantly excised a paragraph of this which I enjoyed very much, because it would be stealing to quote it all - but please read it all, he has something lovely to say about poetry printed on napkins in the very next para. Not only that but he has a book of poetry on the shortlist for the T.S. Eliot prize - thanks to Andrew Burke for the news of that announcement.

weekend news 2: neighbour wins Bristol short story prize

It is not every week that I go out for bread and bump into a neighbour who has won the Bristol Short Story prize. Saves me a bit of feed-reading!! and makes our little shopping square a larger place to be, all of a sudden.

'Beyond The Blackout Curtain', by Elizabeth Jane, took first prize of 500 pounds, publication and a Waterstones' gift card, and sits first in the 2009 prize anthology, which can be purchased at several UK outlets. The prize is awarded with the aim of finding stories to publish in a 'vibrant, original short story anthology' to be stocked in as many bookshops as possible, including high street chains, and to promote the profile of the Bristol Review of Books.

It was awarded way back in July (yes, my neighbour is modest and did not email me about this. I hope she keeps in better touch next time she does something astonishing) and entries for next year's prize will be accepted between December 2009 and March 2010.

Belated and heartfelt congratulations, Liz. BRAVA!!!

what, no science fiction? please, we're Bookerish

Now that I've found the Blog It button on Typepad, and stuck it on my busy little toolbar - you might still get some news from time to time.

Here, Kim Stanley Robinson quotes a letter from Virginia Woolf to a science fiction writer, while criticising the Booker judges for failing to include any science fiction in the shortlist.

Robinson believes that Stapledon's "strange novels" made a "real impact on Woolf", changing her writing. "Her final novel, Between the Acts ... ends with Stapledonian imagery, describing our species steeped in the eons. Woolf's last pages were a kind of science fiction," he wrote in his article for the New Scientist. "When it came to literature, she had no prejudices. She read widely and her judgment was superb. And so I am confident that if she were reading today, she would be reading science fiction along with everything else. And she would still be 'greatly interested, and elated too' – because British science fiction is now in a golden age."

the book has a collaborative future, says Stein

While Bob Stein's address on the future of the book at the Capitol on Thursday night was riveting stuff, its delivery was not without some issues - it never ceases to amaze me how MWF administrators manage to program digital publishing events in venues with no Internet access. While two years ago anyone appearing with Net-dependent stuff should have come armed to the teeth with backup plans (including the ability to use a screen set up in a tent!) it's a tad surprising in 2009 that we still need to spell this kind of thing out to festival organisers.

Is it really that hard to let a presenter on digital issues know that there are digital issues with the venue well in advance? Not only that, but as with Germaine Greer's address in this venue a year ago (not part of MWF), it was apparently not possible to have stage lights dimmed, making it hard for Stein to see his own laptop screen while presenting. I doubt the magnificence of the venue made up to him for that, if indeed he could see the damn place at all (Greer could not, and complained she could not see us several times).

Rant over. In a rather large nutshell, early work with text and video at the Voyager Company showed Stein that 'a book is a medium where the user is in control of their experience', in other words, 'user-driven media'. In the early '80s, a book was also what he described as a 'random access device' - and in that sense, without the availability to the general public of recording and rewinding tools, television was not.

In his work on the Criterion series of films recorded on laser disc for Voyager, Stein watched films and 'read' movies the way he read books, turning back and forward, stopping, repeating bits he needed to see again, developing multimedia features now common on DVD, such as director commentary.

He left Voyager in the mid-90s but was coaxed back into publishing sometime in the 'noughties, eventuating in the development of the annotating tools and projects for which he is best known. 

that festive time of year for writers and readers

There is truly something for everyone at MWF this year, though fewer sessions with individual poets than one might expect, and an attempt has been made to save festival-lovers some dosh by packaging tickets together, so I hope that goes down well with those of us who are a little less decisive in our purchases. (Maybe a discount on purchases of four or more tickets across the fortnight is on its way?)

Congratulations are due to Rosemary Cameron for allowing the festival to expand to fit its new Fed Square spaces across the last two festivals - best wishes for the future to this retiring director.

Do look out for fantastic festival blogger Estelle Tang on the MWF blog as she will keep you posted on many good things. (She can also be heard on SYN FM on Saturdays.)

I am hoping to get to hear Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House and MobyLives fame at some point, and though I am delighted she is here, I am pretty much keeping away from MJH so that her mystique is preserved. There are some authors who really should keep out of the limelight so we keep asking questions - I'm a bit odd about that, but one day I'll hold forth on the matter in more detail. For now, I'm happy for her to tell us she's boring wherever she chooses to do so - and I respect her, dammit! for doing that - and to find her books completely compelling instead.

So enjoy whatever you get to - there's plenty happening. Congratulations are due to Tom Cho and Kate Middleton for receiving nominations for The Age Book of the Year awards, winners of which will be announced tonight - you can read the shortlist here.

To kick off my infinitesimal contribution to publicising the presence of a digital publishing program at MWF this year, accept this update on matters digital from Kate Eltham, CEO of the Queensland Writers' Centre, who is appearing at some MWF events after this steam punk publishing venture with the ABC's Pool.

Kate, Nick Earls, Kim Wilkins and Hinemoana Baker are travelling through Queensland by steam train to commemorate the 1990 Writers' Train, and blogging and collaboratively publishing about their trip as they go.

In other digi news, publishers at MWF can see first hand what CommentPress and Sophie (this one, not this one) are all about by attending a workshop with Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book. I am surprised to learn that these tools have been in development for close to seventeen years - I first came across CommentPress in 2007 or thereabouts, as part of the publishing platform for McKenzie Wark's 2007 publication, Gamer Theory. A more recent example of how CommentPress can be used for publishing discussion is here. I am looking forward to hearing Stein speak at a couple of things on Thursday 27th.

And now, for something not entirely different -  Richard Nash, elsewhere, speaking of another festival in another town, is inviting people to vote on SXSW programs, including a proposal for The Novel in 2050:

"...The spiel is “Research shows reading a book for as little as six minutes may cut stress levels in half. But have Twitter-length attention spans decreased demand for novels? What is the future of the “non-networked” book? This panel will debate the relevance of novels in a networked world.”

Questions to be asked include:

Will novels exist in 2050? What will they look like?
Have modern Twitter-length attention spans decreased interest in novels?
How might crowdsourcing and collaboration contribute to the creation of a novel?
What are some recent examples of networked books?
Are young people reading novels?
Does a novel communicate differently on a Kindle, iPhone, or other electronic device?
Is the Internet more of a threat to publishing than film or television were in the 20th century?
Why is technology mostly absent in the plots of contemporary novels?
How might novels use games and cross-platform storytelling?

What about novels should be preserved? What needs to change?"

I can't help thinking that a 20 year old reading this proposal in 2050 will label it 'poignant' as my son did when recently perusing my reprint of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage. Happy festivals, everyone.

and they'll none of 'em be missed

Shortlists? Vic Premier's, Age Book Of Year? we haz them.

As well as a wacky bestseller list from Readings. Just look at the first two there, don't they look cosy together?

Emerging Writers' Festival - this wheel shall explode

The zine fair that was once the total Festival has truly emerged -

sitting alongside our usual cultural icons in this Marvellous City of Literature and GT Fords.

A very fine ten day festival, and I  only got to a tiny bit of it. The wrap at Arts Hub reports director David Ryding expressing delight at a 55 year old writer's ability to get four publishers interested in her work due to contacts made at the festival.

People are, justifiably, making very agreeable noises all over - Estelle has given some great reports on 3000 Books especially - leaving me scratching my head saying, "Who IS David Ryding?" (apart from being the nice man who answered my complaint about the proposed change to the name of the Scrabble event some time last year, after my emerging comedian took part in it.)

Anyway. Early last year enterprising young theatre blogger Chris Summers of Theatargh went head to head with Ryding  about what he is hoping to achieve as festival director, and I feel is close to realising after only two years in the seat. It's a fine interview, and captures the feel of EWF in lots of ways - Ryding turns the interview format on its head and asks a few questions of his own, in much the same way his festivals do.

The program advisory committee has also played its part - with people of this calibre on board, a good result's guaranteed.

So Summer Read mooches on

It was awards time at the State Library on Friday night as the Summer Read, a statewide reader development initiative now in its fourth year, came to a close with presentation of prizes and awards to readers, libraries and authors selected by popular vote.
I am agnostic about popular votes, but I was not agnostic about the expression of rampant favouritism for Ann Blainey's superb biography, I Am Melba.

The list of voters' favourites included Beaten By A Blow by Dennis McNamara, the true story of a shearer's life; the Miles Franklin-longlisted Addition, by Toni Jordan; and (surprise!) Radical Melbourne (in two volumes), by Jeff and Jill Sparrow, as well as Jarad Henry's crime novel, Blood Sunset. Here is a list with links, and here's Angela Meyer's coverage of more features of the event at Crikey.

I did mean to congratulate the Sparrows at the time, so I'll do it here instead.  There's further analysis (and an invitation!) after the fold.

carefully calibrated essays - the prize is shared again

Just in from Australian Book Review:

Jane Goodall and Kevin Brophy share the 2009 Calibre Prize

In its short life the Calibre Prize has fast become the country's premier essay prize, as well as one of the most lucrative essay prizes in the world.
Calibre is a joint initiative of Australian Book Review (ABR) and Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)'s Cultural Fund.

It is intended to generate brilliant new essays and to foster greater interest in the essay form.

This year's Calibre Prize is shared by Jane Goodall for 'Footprints', and Kevin Brophy for 'What're yer lookin' at yer fuckin' dog?'.

Each winner will receive $5000.

On learning of his success, Kevin Brophy [poet, novelist and academic] had this to say:

               I am grateful to CAL and ABR for making this award possible, and so valuable. I have been drawn to the essay form over and over again during my writing life, in part, I think, because those rambling speeches my father made at the dinner table to us children were essays. I learned it from him. I love the essay as a form because it has room for story, thought, research, personal elements and even poetry. It can offer every kind of writing, modulating and criss-crossing throughout...

Jane Goodall [novelist, academic and critic] commented:

...Writing can be a mysteriously isolated and inactive form of
activity, but it always seeks connection back to the world, and I so wanted this essay to be connected. 'Footprints' is all about connections, starting with the strange ways that stories have of cross-linking their themes and images, even across great distances of space, time and culture. Ultimately, it's about the connection between the earth and the human foot.

Both winning essays will appear in full in the April issue of Australian Book Review.

Update: Longlist, and shortlisted entries, here.

House of Exile nominated for Gold

... as Perry has reported, a title I reviewed recently has been shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. And deservedly so.
The ALS medal looks to be another award that is selected across categories, as the list includes biography, poetry and fiction.

(The Slap, of course, has been reviewed here too - but I hardly need to link to that review as it has persistently increased the traffic here since it was posted back in November last year. If that's anything to go by, it's either one hell of a popular book, an easily remembered title, or both.)

is the warwick prize the moving edge of the prize economy?

Is the Warwick Prize a prize with a difference, detecting, as China Miéville suggests here, the 'moving edge' of writing?

Is there such a thing, and can it be detected simply by throwing all kinds of writing against a wall and telling judges to take their pick? News on the inaugural award, to Naomi Klein for The Shock Doctrine, is here.

"At a time when the news out of the publishing industry is usually so bleak it's thrilling to be part of a bold new prize supporting writing, especially alongside such an exciting array of other books," Klein said on learning of her win.

She beat a hugely varied shortlist which ranged from scientific theory to Spanish fiction to take the award, seeing off strong competition from Mad, Bad and Sad, Lisa Appignanesi's intricate study of the relationship between women and mental illness, and Alex Ross's Guardian first book award-winning history of 20th-century music, The Rest is Noise.

Francisco Goldman's investigation into the murder of Guatemalan bishop Juan Gerardi, The Art of Political Murder, Stuart A Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred and the solitary novel on the shortlist, Enrique Vila-Matas's study of an obsessive writer, Montano's Malady, completed the line-up.