Ok, I admit it. This post’s link to Australian literature is tenuous, but there is a link, even though it’s not the subject of this post. The link is that the person who inspired this post, Ed Le Brocq, previously known as Emma Ayres, has written several books – memoirs, mostly – of which I’ve read and posted on one, Cadence. Since then, as Eddie/Ed Ayres and Ed Le Brocq (married name), he has published Danger music, Whole notes and Sound bites. None of these, however, have much to do with this post, though they all interest me.
Ed Le Brocq became known to many of us – starting back when he was Emma – as a radio announcer on our ABC Classic FM. She was hugely popular. Since then, she left radio, travelled some more, transitioned to Ed, and in 2019 returned to ABC Classic FM, doing the Weekend Breakfast show. I often listen in. This last weekend, he told a little story and asked us a question – and I thought, for a change of pace, that I would ask it of you too.
The story goes this way – but needs a little explanation first. As well as radio announcing, Ed Le Brocq performs music, and teaches it – the viola and cello. The story concerns a lesson he was conducting recently from his garage because his usual venue in a school wasn’t available. A mother walked by with her 7-year-old son and apparently the son was attracted to the music. He came into the garage, and asked, “What’s that you’re playing?” and, on being given the answer, said, “I want to play that too”. He will start lessons next year – on one of those two stringed instruments.
Ed was fascinated by the child’s recognition of something that he really wanted to do, and asked the radio audience whether they knew around that age what they wanted to do – and whether they’d done it. So:
Did you realise when you were around 7 years old (give or take a couple of years) what your interest or passion was, and is that what you ended up doing in some way or another?
It seems I did. When I was around 5, my father was President of the local Apex group (a service organisation roughly like Lions and Rotary). I was fascinated by his papers, and am reported as saying, “When you die, can I have your Apex stuff?” Jump a few years to when I was around 11, and I remember myself creating a little neighbourhood library, complete with Date Due notations in the back of my books. Around the age of 14, I encouraged my sister to help me write an encyclopaedia, starting with one article per letter (though we didn’t get far because adolescence hit!)
Is it any wonder that I ended up being a librarian-archivist – and that it was a career I loved?
Those of you who know me on other social media will already have seen some of this, but I am keen to spread the message wherever I can about my brother’s wonderful, and significant, project. I introduced it back in September – and later in Nonfiction November I will review the book. That, however, will be after the exhibition has closed, and I want to encourage anyone who is in Tasmania to see it.
Uninnocent Landscapes – the exhibition and book – is the culmination of an idea Ian started thinking about a decade ago, but that he actively worked on over the last two to three years. It involved his following the journey taken by George Augustus Robinson on his 1831/32 Big River Mission, which was a poorly conceived attempt to conciliate between settler and Aboriginal Tasmanians. Needless to say it was a disaster, that effectively ended First People’s resistance in lutruwita/Tasmania (at the time anyhow!) For Ian, who has come to call lutruwita home, there is discomfort in reconciling his privileged life as a middle-class white man with the devastating impact of colonialism on Tasmania’s First Peoples. This is his truthtelling project, and he found a unique way to do it by combining the three big passions of his life (besides family) – history, photography and the bush.
I will write more about this when I review the book because what Ian has done feels original and exciting. Essentially, though, the book and the exhibition comprise photographs accompanied by excerpts from Robinson’s journal, resulting in an experience that is enlightening, engrossing, and sobering. The exhibition contains a selection of 11 from the book’s over 50 photographs.
The venue, Sidespace Gallery, is in a heritage building that dates back to the mid-1800s. This means two things – there are some restrictions on how items can be affixed, and the walls and floors are not what you would call square. However, Ian and his “crack instal team” did the research and, by the time I got there, were ready to go. The photographs – large-scale archival prints – were “hung” through a clever system of special Japanese tape (that doesn’t mark walls), double-sided tape, and magnets. I enjoyed being a little part of it all on the first day of installation, and loved meeting Ian’s delightful, hardworking team, Erica and Nikki, who made me feel so very welcome.
The opening (and book launch) went very well, with 50 or 60 in attendance. The MC was writer and researcher Steph Cahalan, and the exhibition was formally opened by Tony Brown, a First Nations man and museum colleague of my now-retired brother. Ian of course then spoke to his project, explaining, among other things, that he had discussed his project with many in the local Aboriginal community, and had made clear that he was not trying to tell their story, but his own. His good relationships with the community suggest that they accept this.
It was a warm-hearted event attended by historians, artists, museum professionals, bushies, activists, not to mention family and friends. I met and talked with so many interesting, thoughtful people who support Ian’s project and believe in what he is doing. I can’t name them all, but before it all started I had a great chat with the two women who designed and published the book. Our conversation ranged from technical issues like fonts to more personal ones like downsizing and philanthropy. It was truly a privilege to be there.
Ian calls Uninnocent Landscapes a photographic conversation. By this he means, I think – though I didn’t ask him while we were together – that he is using photography to reflect on (to interrogate, in fact) his relationship with the Tasmanian landscape he loves so much but which has been indelibly affected by over two centuries of colonialism. The idea of conversation, however, also encompasses something ongoing and inclusive, something inviting us all to join in as we engage with his photos and, for those of us living in colonised places, as we engage with “our” places. I will discuss this more, and talk about the title, in my review!
Uninnocent landscapes, the book, is published and distributed by OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights under their imprint An Artist’s Own Book. It costs $65, and all proceeds are going to the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania’s Giving Land Back fund. You can order it here.
Ian Terry Uninnocent Landscapes Sidespace Galley, Salamanca Arts Centre 3 – 13 November, 2023 Admission is free
This is a new award that was first made in 2022. It is not a huge award in prize money, but it’s not minuscule either. The winning author (or authors) receives $15,000 and each shortlisted author receives $1,000. It’s great to see, in fact, more and more awards offering a monetary prize to the shortlisted books.
recognises the vital part political books play in better understanding Australian politics and public policy. Well researched, balanced and compelling political books that engage Australians are vital to the strength or our democracy.
Further, it says, the longlisted, shortlisted and winning books will be those the judges determine to have
provided the most compelling contribution to the understanding of Australian political events and debates.
The award is sponsored by a Melbourne independent bookshop, Hill of Content Bookshop, and the York Park Group.
James Curran, Australia’s China odyssey: From euphoria to fear (NewSouth Publishing): looks at the relationship between China and Australia through Australia’s prime minister from Gough Whitlam in 1972.
Russell Marks, Black lives, white law: Locked up and locked out in Australia (La Trobe University Press): interrogates the fact that First Nations Australians are the most incarcerated people on the planet. This book has also just been shortlisted for the Australian History section of the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Nick Mackenzie, Crossing the line (Hachette Australia): exposes the story behind the fall of SAS hero Ben Roberts-Smith.
Nikki Sava, Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s fall and Anthony Albanese’s rise (Scribe Publications): self-explanatory, I’d say!
You can see the 2023 longlist on the same page. It includes books by the historian Frank Bongiorno, First Nations author Stan Grant, and author, ex-political advisor and speechwriter, Don Watson. This year’s judges are well-known political journalists Laura Tingle and Barrie Cassidy, and the academic John Warhurst.
Australia’s current treasurer, Jim Chalmers, announced the 2022 winner at a National Press Club event, the winner being Dean Ashenden’s Telling Tennant’s Story: the strange career of the great Australian silence. It’s about Tennant Creek’s, and by extension, Australia’s silence about the past, about the truth of what happened between settler and First Nations Australians.
Anyhow, back to Chalmers … he spoke, of course, about the prize, the judges and the books. I particularly liked this point he made about political books:
A good book is never just a collection of speeches or an extra-long feature piece – it’s a true study of an issue or idea, full of complications and confirmation, and with the pleasure of illustration, story-telling, portraiture.
He says more, but I’ll just share one more excerpt from his speech, in which he talked about “narratives that don’t just help us recognise patterns but also help us question our assumptions about the patterns we think we see”. That’s the important thing, isn’t it – to keep questioning the assumptions we make, because it is too easy to get locked into them, even when the world and/or our own lives and experiences change.
POSTSCRIPT: Nancy Elin noted in the comments that she has read all the shortlist, and has predicted the winner. Rather than link to each post, I’m giving you this link to her blog as she is an assiduous reader of Aussie books.
Had you heard of the Australian Political Book of the Year Award, and, regardless, does such an award interest you?
Mary Gilmore, 1927 (Public Domain, State Library of QLD, via Wikipedia)
First though, a bit on Mary Gilmore, for those who don’t know here. She was an Australian writer and journalist, best known as a poet. One day, I will write separately on her, but for now, I will just say that she was highly political, and was part of the utopian socialist New Australia colony set up by William Lane in Paraguay. I wrote about this in another Monday Musings back in 2015.
Gilmore lived a long life, dying in 1962 (in fact!), at the age of 97. She was involved in socialist and trade union movements, and wrote for Tribune, the Communist Party of Australia’s newspaper, though she was apparently never a party member. Her political interests are relevant to the award.
The Award has been known by different names since its creation in 1956 by the ACTU, the Australian Council of Trade Unions. According to AustLit, it was called the ACTU Dame Mary Gilmore Award, and its goal was, ‘to encourage literature “significant to the life and aspirations of the Australian People”‘. Over the years, says Wikipedia, it has been “awarded for a range of categories, including novels, poetry, a three-act (full-length) play, and a short story”. Reading between the lines, I assume this means it was more about content than form.
Since 1985, it has been confined to poetry – to a first book of poetry, in fact – and since around 2019 has been managed by ASAL, the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Its specific history, I must say, is not particularly clear, but at some time its name was simplified to the Mary Gilmore Award. It was awarded annually until 1998, was then biennial until 2016, but now seems to be annual again. It’s a good example of the challenge to survive that many awards face. The Wikipedia article linked above lists the winners from 1985 to the present.
Pre-1985
It’s the early years of the award that I’m most interested in, mainly because they are less well documented. I’ve tried various search permutations in Trove and have found scattered bits of information, some of which I’ll share here. My first comment is, Wot’s in a name?
I have not found a formal announcement of the award, unless this advertisement in the Tribune of 21 March 1956, the year the award was apparently established, is it. It calls the award the Mary Gilmore Prize, and says submissions should be made to the Victorian May Day Committee. The May Day Committee isn’t the ACTU, but they are closely related, and both support workers’ rights. Indeed, the Victorian May Day Committee page notes that “The labour movement and the trade union movement should continue to build this day as it is the working people’s day”.
Anyhow, the ad invites submissions to the “May Day competitions” and then says that “the best three stories and the best three verses will be eligible for consideration for the Mary Gilmore Prize of £50”. It sounds like May Day literary competitions were already established – the prizes were small, just £5 and £3 – but now a bigger prize was to be offered in the name of Mary Gilmore. And, this year at least, short stories and poetry were the chosen forms. The ad also says that:
The short story and verse most favored by the judges will be those best expressing the aspirations and democratic traditions of the Australian people.
Then, on 12 December 1956, the Tribune announced that “two Mary Gilmore Literary Competitions have been announced by the May Day Committees of Melbourne; Sydney, Brisbane and Newcastle”. For May Day 1957, the “Mary Gilmore Literary Competition” would award prizes for the “first and second short stories and poems, in each of two classes”, meaning four prizes in each class. Class A was for “established” (or )published writers, and B for “new” writers. For May Day 1958, they offered the “Mary Gilmore Novel Competition”, with “a substantial prize, to be announced later” for the “best novel submitted”. The overall announcement added that:
The judges will prefer stories and poems which deal with the life and aspirations of the Australian people.
You can see how tricky the history of awards can be. I have to assume this is the “ACTU Dame Mary Gilmore Award”.
The next mention I found – and I could have missed some – was from the Tribune of 6 January 1960, which, announcing some new publications from the Australasian Book Society, included
Available now, The last blue sea – David Forrest (Winner, Dame Mary Gilmore Award).
Interestingly, it’s a World War II set story.
Then, again in the Tribune, but this one, almost two years later on 13 December 1961, there is a report on a reception for Ron Tullipan who had won “the 1961 Dame Mary Gilmore Award for his novel, Rear vision“. It’s quite an extensive report which includes references to Jack Beasley, who was “one of the judges of the competition, which is sponsored each year in association with May Day celebrations”. He was concerned about the suggested takeover of the publisher, Angus and Robertson, by Consolidated Press. Read the article if you are interested. The report also noted that:
The Dame Mary Gilmore Award was probably unique in the capitalist world, and a real contribution to Australian literature.
On 22 August 1962, the Tribune announced the presentation of the Dame Mary Gilmore Awards for “poetry, novels and stories”. The winners were Jack Penberthy’s story, “The Bridge”, and Dennis Kevans’ poem, “For Rebecca”. Mysteriously, no novel is named. This report also helpfully names past winners of the award, but without more detail – Joan Hendry, Vera Deacon, Ron Tullipan, Dorothy Hewett, Hugh Mason, and David Forrest. Dorothy Hewett is probably the only one of these still known today.
This article also shared that the Award’s National Chairman, George Seelaf, believed that “in a few years they would be the major literary competitions in our country” but “still more financial support from more unions” was “urgently required”:
“Trade Unionism has always been strongest and literature has always been strongest when writers and unions were closest together. We will encourage writers who tell of the life and aspirations of the Australian people”.
Don’t you love this conviction about the value of literature?
that she was particularly glad to learn of the high standard and the large number of entries. “The more writers, the better expressed will be the thoughts and wishes of Australians,” she says.
The Canberra Times – for a change – reported on 29 September 1962 that Ron Tullipan had won the “Mary Gilmore Award” with his “hard novel”, March into morning (which I described in my last Monday Musings). Is this the novel not mentioned in Tribune’s August report?
I found more award-winners from the 1960s, and they are interesting in terms of form. In 1963, for example, Hesba Brinsmead’s manuscript of the children’s (young adult) book, Pastures of the blue crane, won. That year, the “Mary Gilmore Award” was for a children’s book, with a second award for a book by a teenager. (Tribune 16 January 1963). In 1967, Pat Flower won the “Dame Mary Gilmore Award” for her hour-long television drama, Tilley landed on our shores. By then, the award was worth $500.
More work needs to be done on this, but it looks like the Dame Mary Gilmore Award Committee would decide each year what the award was for, rather than make it always open to multiple forms. The 1964 award, for example, seems to have been for a novel, while the 1966 one was for poetry. Whatever, the point is that all through this era of the award, the trade unions were behind it, until – well, I haven’t discovered yet how that aspect of it ended. But, what an interesting award.
The 1960s was an exciting decade for those of us who lived it. Change was in the air, and we truly thought we were making a fairer society. (Little did we know.) Wikipedia describes it thus:
Known as the “countercultural decade” in the United States and other Western countries, the Sixties is noted for its counterculture. There was a revolution in social norms, including clothing, music (such as the Altamont Free Concert), drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, civil rights, precepts of military duty, and schooling.
I was in primary school in 1962, and my life was simple and stable. It wasn’t until the mid to late 60s that I became caught up in the excitement in the air. This is not only because I was a bit older, I think, but because the momentum was still building in the early part of the decade. However, there were hints of change in my 1962 research. But, let’s start with the books …
I found books published across all forms, but given my focus is fiction and I want to keep things a bit tight here, I’m just sharing a selection of 1962-published novels:
James Aldridge, A captive in the land
Thea Astley, The well dressed explorer (Lisa’s review)
Criena Rohan (pseud. for Deirdre Cash), The delinquent
Donald Stuart, Yaralie
Geoff Taylor, Dreamboat
Ron Tullipan, March into morning
George Turner, The cupboard under the stairs (Lisa’s review)
Arthur Upfield, The will of the tribe
Children’s literature was going strongly at the time, with books published by authors still remembered as writers of our children’s classics, such as Nan Chauncy, Ruth Park, Ivan Southall, P.L. Travers, and Patricia Wrightson.
There were very few literary awards at the time. The ALS Gold Medal went to Vincent Buckley’s Masters in Israel, and for the first time since I started taking part in the Year Club, the Miles Franklin Award was in existence. It was shared by the Thea Astley and George Turner novels listed above. There was also, though Wikipedia doesn’t list it, the ACTU Dame Mary Gilmore Award, but I plan a special post on it, so watch this space.
Writers born this year are mostly still around though I haven’t reviewed many: Matthew Condon, Alison Croggon (my post on her memoir), Luke Davies, and Craig Sherborne. Deaths included the novelist Jean Devanny and poet Mary Gilmore. The librarian Nita Kibble (for whom the Nita B Kibble Awards – now seemingly in abeyance – were named) died this year, as did the critic HM Green.
The state of the art
Of course, I checked Trove to see what newspapers were saying about Australian literature, and fiction in particular, and will just share two threads I found.
First Nations Australians
With the devastating loss of The Voice referendum here last weekend, I would like to start with some First Nations (or Aboriginal) Australians that came up in my Trove travels, which mainly involved references to writers including Aboriginal characters in their books. One was Helen Heney (1907-1990) whose father was the first Australian-born editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. Heney wrote several novels – plus social commentary, translation and a biography – but the one published in 1962 was The leaping blaze. It is set in a station in western New South Wales, which is now in the hands of the latest generation, the “spinster” Evangeline Wade. The Canberra Times’ reviewer (January 5, 1963) explains that Evangeline has been frustrated through her life, and now wants power over others. Part of her plan is to create an “aboriginal station on her property as. an experiment”, but this plan, says our reviewer, is “motivated more by a desire to gain further power than it is to further native welfare”. Unfortunately, our reviewer continues, the novel lacks a clear focus, which
is a pity because Miss Heney is essentially a writer of ideas. She is not just telling a story. / She is obviously out to give her views on a number of sociological problems but the canvas is too large for anything more than a casual sketching of them.
The other novel I want to share is Yaralie by Donald Stuart (1913- 1982) which tells “the story of the daughter of a white father and a half-caste mother, and the people among whom they live”. The Nepean Times’ reviewer (October 11) writes:
Told with a good deal of warmth, the story is set in a native settlement in north-west Australia during the depression and deals with the ever-present problem concerning the treatment of the aborigines in a white Australia.
Donald Stuart is new to me, but seems worth following up. His work is sure to be dated now we have First Nations people telling their own stories, but he’s part of a tradition. Wikipedia says
Stuart attempts to view the world from the Aboriginal point of view, making him one of the few Australian writers, along with anthropologists such as T.G.H. Strehlow, Charles Pearcy Mountford, Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt, to even attempt to come close to a personal knowledge of Aboriginal people.
Realist literature and The Australasian Book Society
The main thread I found through Trove, however, concerned communist writers and realist literature. This emphasis might be partly due to the fact that Trove’s content in this period is somewhat skewed as the Australian Communist Party’s newspaper, Tribune, has been digitised, because, like The Canberra Times, they have given permission despite still being under copyright.
However, before I searched Trove, I had already noticed the significant number of authors in the list who were Communists – often members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) – or Communist-sympathisers, so the slant may be real to some degree! Anyhow, what these writers tended to write were realist (or social realist) novels, the preferred genre for Communist writers.
It was clear from several articles that these social realist writers felt under-appreciated at home. The Tribune regularly reported on the success of Australian social realist writers overseas. On January 17, the Tribune wrote that CPA-member Dorothy Hewett’s realist 1959 novel, Bobbin Up, about women in a spinning factory, was “becoming a novel of world repute” with translations being published, or to be published, in the German Democratic Republic, Rumania, Hungary and, very likely, the Netherlands.
And on February 7, under the heading “Success despite critics”, the Tribune advised that another book by an Australian Communist author was garnering interest overseas ‘despite class-prejudiced criticisms by Australian daily press “experts”.’ Progressive authors like Katharine Prichard, Frank Hardy, Dorothy Hewett, and Mona Brand were being published overseas, it said, and now they’d heard Judah Waten’sShares in murder, “a murder story that is different because of its social exposure content” was to be serialised in New Berlin Illustrated, and published in book form in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and, they expected, the Soviet Union.
It is this very Judah Waten who, in another article, is scathing about Australia’s literary darlings of the time. On March 28, again in the Tribune, he wrote:
In Australia today the writers who are acclaimed in the daily press, win awards and prizes are those distinguished for the obscurity of their prose, their irrational characters, their dream symbolism, parallels to ancient myths, feudal attitudes and pornography.
Who are these writers? Patrick White? Hal Porter? Thea Astley too perhaps?
I also noticed that many of the books praised in the Tribune were published by the Australasian Book Society, so I went hunting, and found a seminar was held about it in 2021. The seminar promo described the Society as
a mid-twentieth-century, book-club style, cooperative publisher with a subscription model that promised four books a year to members and distribution through unions, industry associations, education organisations and the communities of the organised left in Australia, including the communist party. It sought to find readers who did not read literature and to develop writers who did not yet write it.
Fascinating. In 1962, this Society celebrated its 10th anniversary … but, like the Dame Mary Gilmore Prize, I think it deserves its own post.
Meanwhile, just to show that not all my research ended up at the Tribune, I’ll close with a review from The Canberra Times of Ron Tullipan’s novel March into morning, which was published by the Australasian Book Society in 1962, and won the Dame Mary Gilmore prize. It tells the story of a man “who started life as a ward of the State and was hired out to a slave-driving cocky, whose only interest in him was how to exploit him”. Writing on September 29, reviewer G.C.P. says it
may sound like one of those hopeless novels whose authors are only concerned to spit into Authority’s eye and point out wickedness in high places. / Fortunately, it is not, and reads more like an honest piece of reporting.
G.C.P. assesses its strengths and weaknesses, and concludes that “it is not great literature, [but] it is a very readable book”. Judah Waten would probably see this as damning it with faint praise!
Sources
1962 in Australian Literature (Wikipedia
Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine, Annals of Australian literature, 2nd ed. OUP, 1992 (with Bill’s help)
Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1954 and 1940.
Do you plan to take part in the 1962 Club – and if so how?
Last November, I announced the creation of the new 20/40 Publishing Prize by the wonderful (and local-ish to me), independent, non-profit publisher, Finlay Lloyd. Now, eleven months later, the awarding of the inaugural prize is imminent, with the shortlist being announced last Friday and the winners to be announced on 28 October.
But, just to recap, 20/40 is a manuscript award, with the prize being publication. It is not limited to debut or young or women or any other subgroup of writers, as some manuscript awards are. However, it does have some criteria, in addition to looking for “writing of the highest quality”. The submissions can be fiction or non-fiction, must be prose (but “all genres … including hybrid forms” are welcome), and must be between 20,000 and 40,000 words (hence the award’s name, the 20/40 Prize). They aim to choose two winners, each year. In the communication I received last week about the shortlist, Finlay Lloyd publisher and commissioning editor, Julian Davies, says:
Our passion for creating this opportunity for writers and bringing their work to the reading public will continue next year and, we hope, for many more.
That’s great to hear … and we can do our bit to help by buying and reading the winning published novels.
And now, the Shortlist
You can read a brief description of the six works at the announcement link above, so here I will provide some brief author information that I have found online.
Roger Averill, Slippage: freelance researcher, editor and writer, with four books published by Transit Lounge – Exile: The lives and hope of Werner Pelz (Lisa’s review), the memoir Boy he cry: An island odyssey, and two novels, Keeping faith and Relatively famous (Lisa’s review).
Rebecca Burton, Ravenous girls: editor, and author of two young adult novels, Leaving Jetty Road and Beyond Evie, both published by HarperCollins Australia.
Rachel Flynn, New moon rising: author of children’s picture books and novels, including the I hate Friday series, published by Penguin.
Kim Kelly, Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room: author of 12 , mostly historical fiction, novels, most if not all published by Brio Books.
Jane Skelton, Breathing water: writer of poetry, short fiction and novels, published by Flying River Press, Rochford Press, Spineless Wonders and others.
Olivia De Zilva, Hold on tight: writer and poet.
Julian Davies explains on the shortlist page that the works were judged blind.
The judging panel for the inaugural prize comprised Katia Ariel (author and editor), Christina Balint (whose novella, Water music, I’ve reviewed), John Clanchy (novelist and short story writer whom I’ve reviewed a few times), Julian Davies (the publisher and also an author whom I’ve also reviewed a few times), and Stefanie Markidis (writer and researcher).
When I first announced this prize last November, I noted its relevance to Novellas in November. So, I am thrilled about the timing of this announcement, because you can pre-order the two winning novellas at the Finlay Lloyd site, for a special discounted price of $43.20 (instead of $24 each). A bargain. And, if you’ve never read a Finlay Lloyd book before, you won’t be disappointed I’m sure in the artefacts themselves, as publishing good writing in beautiful packaging is what they do. Pre-ordered books will be shipped on announcement day, October 28, giving you time to read one or both by the end of November! I plan to.
For a small, specialist, independent publisher, Spineless Wonders has appeared on my blog more times than you might expect, sometimes in passing, sometimes as the publisher of an author I’ve reviewed, and a few times in posts on publishing and publishers. All that, I’ve decided, has earned them their own post.
The first – and main – time I mentioned Spineless Wonders specifically was back in 2013 in a Monday Musings on Specialist Presses, in which they were one of five presses I chose to introduce. I said then that I thought they’d been established around 2011 – and I added an aside that I wished all organisations would include at least some history on their websites. Well, they have now confirmed on their About page that they were indeed founded in 2011 by Bronwyn Mehan.
Who is Bronwyn Mehan?
Like other keen Aussie litbloggers, I know the names of several publishing company CEOs (or directors or managers, or whatever they are called), particularly at the small presses, but Bronwyn Mehan is not one of them. So, I went searching, and didn’t find much, but there was something on SPN, the website for the Small Press Network. Her entry there is not extensive, but it tells us a few things. It says, not surprisingly, that she “looks for innovative ways to connect Australian authors with new audiences, collaborating with artists and organisations engaged in multi-media and performing arts”. “New” audiences is so important to those of us who believe in the value of the arts, isn’t it?
Anyhow, it also said that in 2018, she spent a month in New York as part of a Publishing Fellowship researching trends in multi-platform publishing. She has also been a peer assessor for the Australia Council Literature Board and in 2021 she took part in the Australia Council’s (now Creative Australia) Future Form program. As far as I can tell it’s a “leadership program” intended to help small to medium arts organisations “transform and innovate their core business model”. And that’s about it, except that I did read elsewhere that she also writes – short and long fiction, and poetry.
What is Spineless Wonders doing?
At the time of my 2013 post, they described themselves as being “devoted to short, quality fiction produced by Australian writers … [to] brief fiction in all its forms – short story, novella, sudden fiction and prose poetry”. And, as I explained, their name referred to the fact that they delivered their publications “to readers via smart phones and laptops”, but they did (and do) also in print and audio forms. Since, then, however they have expanded further, to, in their words, “a short story production company working collaboratively with authors and artists across many disciplines to get short fiction out into the world – everywhere”.
What does this mean? These initiatives, from their About page, give you an idea:
Performed Fiction: Since 2014, they have produced something they call Little Fictions (originally known as Spineless Wonders Presents… a short evening of tall stories). They describe this as a “unique literary event” involving short stories being read by actors to a live audience. Inspired perhaps by poetry readings? In 2017, the City of Sydney invited them to produce a series of these for their Late Night Library program. Ongoing funding from this has apparently enabled them to create something they call Off the Page, which is a multi-media platform for performed short fiction. Sounds wonderful to me.
Storybombing: In 2016, they formed an interdisciplinary artists’ collective called #Storybombing, which aims “to find innovative ways to activate public spaces with short Australian fiction curated and produced” by themselves. Examples of the initiatives include stories spraypainted onto pavements, installed in retro pushbutton phones, or projected onto buildings. They say you can find examples on their #storybombing tab, but I see there’s nothing there since 2020 so maybe this is a victim of COVID.
Microflix: In 2018, they established the Microflix Awards and Festival, which aimed “to encourage more Australian filmmakers to use work by Australian authors, to reward excellence and creativity in film adaptations and to champion the importance of the writer, and the original text, in the filmmaking process”. Sounds great as short stories make perfect starting points for film. Just look, for example, at how many short stories by Somerset Maugham have been adapted to film. However, around 2021, this initiative ended, but they note on their website that they had partnered with SF3 to continue to encourage collaboration between writers and filmmakers.
What these initiatives tell me is that Spineless Wonders is an innovative company with a clear goal to support short (including micro and flash) fiction. It’s also clear that this is not easy, but that the company is active, flexible, and willing to pivot where they can to achieve their goal. The goal is clearly the thing.
If you look on their home page, you will see in their side-bar other activities and initiatives, like their Es-Press imprint, their work In Translation, and their Audio Lounge. It’s inspired and ambitious, though looking at the dates when things have happened, I suspect these things happen somewhat in fits and starts, but they are clearly exploring every angle they can to get creators works to readers, listeners, and viewers.
You will also see a link to Opportunities and Awards. These include a current call for “startling stories set in Sydney’s past” for Imaginative Recreation – Sydney. There are talks and masterclasses to help creators “invent stories drawn from the archives”, and submissions are due by midnight 17 December 2023. This is where you will also find the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award, but it seems to be in abeyance at the moment. It was funded by the Copyright Agency. They did run again this year, though, their Slinkies Competition for writers under 30. This results in an anthology, and Slinkies 2023 can be pre-ordered now.
Meanwhile, though, Spineless Wonders continues to publish short stories, of which I’ve reviewed a few – two collections by Carmel Bird (The dead aviatrix and, most recently, Love letter to Lola) and the anthology The great unknown edited by Angela Meyer.
And, their YouTube channel has some current content, which provides another opportunity to get to know them.
My point overall, though, is that here is a publishing company working in a challenging form – short fiction – in a way that is inventive and always looking for new ways of reaching people. And, twelve years after being founded, they are still here.
You heard it here first – or, first(ish) anyhow, as the webpage is up and orders are already coming in for a new, beautiful book, Uninnocent landscapes: Following George Augustus Robinson’s Big River Mission. Yes, I admit it isn’t out yet so I haven’t actually seen it, but I know it is beautiful because I’ve seen some of the content over the years, and I’ve seen the cover on the website. It looks stunning.
Of course, I’m biased because the creator is my brother, Ian Terry. However, it goes without saying that I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t feel his project was worthwhile.
So, the project … Ian introduces his motivation on the publisher’s website:
Without invasion, colonisation and the near destruction of lutruwita’s First People, without Robinson’s ‘Friendly Mission’, I would not have had the opportunity to feel so much at home on this island. This is a reality that, as much as we might try to ignore it, non-Indigenous Tasmanians cannot escape. How do we come to terms with our privilege and its Janus face, the violent and continuing dispossession of palawa/pakana?
Now, Ian’s last job before retirement was a senior curator of history at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, during which time, among other things, he mounted exhibitions on First Nations history. He has, for nearly three decades, been an active and contributing member of THRA, the Tasmanian Historical Research Association. History was his undergraduate major, and in the early 1990s he complemented these studies with a Graduate Diploma in Cultural Heritage Management, after which he began working as a freelance history consultant – in lutruwita/Tasmania. History, you could say, is in his blood – and was not going to stop flowing after he retired. Enter the project …
But first, I need to add that in addition to his love of history, Ian has been a photographer since early adulthood. Way back in the the fall of 1983, he joined Mr Gums and me on a road trip through New England and Eastern Canada. We all took photos, but Ian was the one who would climb the hill behind the gorgeous white-spired church, or run across the bridge to the other side of a pretty river, to get the best shot. That interest has never waned and he has honed his skills to the point that he is now achieving recognition in photographic competitions.
This project, which involved his following the steps of George Augustus Robinson’s 1831 Big River Mission (brief description), combines these two passions. It has required historical research to identify Robinson’s movements and actions. It also called on Ian’s negotiating skills when, for example, he needed to enter private property to take the desired photos. It used his well-developed bush skills when he needed to explore more difficult landscapes. And, it depended on his photographic skills because photographs form the core of the book.
Of course, Ian’s tracing of Robinson’s path was not aimless. As the above-linked publisher’s website says, he had various questions in his head as he worked through his project, questions like
What memories do the landscapes of lutruwita/Tasmania hold? What stories are embedded in the rocks, the trees and grasses, the waters of rivers and lagoons? What could the landscape tell us about invasion, colonisation and the destruction of First People’s life and culture? What could it tell us about our own lives here on this island?
Uninnocent landscapes, the book, comprises a selection of Ian’s photographs documenting the landscape in a way that also expresses his ideas about it. It also contains an introduction by Tasmanian art historian, curator, essayist and commentator on identity and place Greg Lehman (a descendant of the Trawulwuy people of north-east Tasmania), and four essays, one by him and three he commissioned from:
Rebecca Digney (manager, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania)
Roderic O’Connor (woolgrower and Connorville custodian)
Nunami Sculthorpe-Green (activist/artist and proud palawa and Warlpiri woman)
I can’t wait to see and read it – and, isn’t it a great title?
Ian with our mother, 2017
But wait, there’s more … there is also Uninnocent landscapes, the exhibition. It will feature large-scale archival prints from the book, and will be held in the Sidespace Gallery at Salamanca Arts Centre in nipaluna/Hobart from 2–14 November 2023. I will be there at the opening.
Uninnocent landscapes is published and distributed by OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights under their imprint An Artist’s Own Book, and will be available from early November. It costs $65, and all proceeds will go to the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania’s Giving Land Back fund. You can preorder here.
To fully disclose: Ian did not pay (or even ask) for this announcement, but he is accommodating me (I hope) on my trip to lutruwita to attend the exhibition opening!
I started my recent post on Shelley Burr’s crime novel Ripper with a statement that crime novels are often written in series and that I am not a big series fan. Ripper looked at the start to be a standalone novel, but a few chapters in the protagonist from her first novel Wake appears. From then on, his voice is irregularly alternated with the novel’s main voice. But, more on that anon.
When I started reading Ripper, then, and thought it was going to be a standalone novel, I considered starting my post with singing the praises of standalones, but then, finding it wasn’t as it seemed, I shelved that issue for another day – like today. I did a little browser searching on the topic and found some useful discussions. They included ideas I’d considered, but some new ones too.
This topic is not specifically Australian, but there are many Australian crime novelists, and most of the ones I know, which is a smidgeon of what’s out there, write series. Crime is not the only genre in which series are common, of course, but it’s the one I’m using to exemplify the issue.
Here is a small selection of Australian crime, mostly authors I have reviewed or would like to read:
I have also read some Australian stand-alone crime – Emily O’Grady’s The yellow house and Emily Maguire’s An isolated incident, being examples. These are more likely to be promoted as “literary crime” as against “genre crime”, though the distinction is loose and not necessarily helpful.
Anyhow, here are some ideas on the subject…
On series
My non-preference for series is based on a few things, the main one being that I read to hear different voices in different settings about different people, places and ideas. Series novels tend to be set in the same place and milieu, with some continuing characters. Another reason is that I like to be challenged by different approaches to story-telling a story, but series novels tend to follow a formula. It might be a good formula, the writing and characterisation might be great, but it risks becoming familiar rather than challenging or exciting.
These reasons relate in fact to what the Kill Zone named as the single biggest advantage to a series, for both writer and reader. Series, they say, provide “comfort food for the imagination”. However, they also recognise the risk that series can become formulaic.
Another issue for me is the amount of backstory that novels in series tend to include. I guess that’s for readers who start a series in the middle, but if you have read the previous novels, it can be irritating. The Kill Zone suggests that this backstory aspect is a challenge for writers too: “How much backstory does the author include in subsequent books without boring the dedicated series fan or confusing the mid-series pick-up reader?” Good question. The Career Authors site looks at it this way: “You want to make sure,” it says, “that each series title is a potential standalone, so that you can tell readers you don’t have to read my books in order!”
British crime writer Carol Wyer writes about the work involved in writing a series. She says:
You’ll need to know your characters inside out, especially those who will appear in each book, and you must continue their personal stories, weaving them in between each storyline and… you need a theme, one that permeates each book and links them all. It must be something that hooks your readers, so they will want to read the next book, maybe another overriding storyline or simply reader investment in each of your main characters.
She has “notebooks and manilla files” for every character, recording their likes and dislikes, how they pronounce things, and so on. The Career Authors site also describes in some detail what writing a series involves for an author. You can’t kill the main character off, for example!
Still, says Wyer, “the rewards are huge” because authors are usually bereft when they end a book and have to “say goodbye to the characters”. With a series they don’t have to!
On standalone
I’ve already implied why I like standalone novels. The Kill Zone, looking at it particularly from the series author’s point of view, says that “the advantage of writing a standalone … is it can bring on a breath of fresh air for you and the reader”. A standalone, that is, lets a writer explore or experiment with new approaches, techniques, subjects, and it lets the reader see new talents in a loved writer. However, the Kill Zone warns writers to not stray so far from their norm that their fans won’t recognise them.
On a Kindle discussion board, I found the warning that “standalone genre novels can be harder to sell”.
Happy mediums
Series vs Standalone looks like an either-or situation, but, is there a happy medium? Well, yes, there is. One is the approach that Shelley Burr took in Ripper. It is set in a different location, and has a different main protagonist, but the protagonist from her first novel plays a subsidiary investigating role from another location. The Kill Zone, in fact, suggests something like this when it recommends that authors could “touch on something” in their new book that had “appeared in a previous series”.
The other idea, one that has a foot firmly planted in both camps is the “trilogy”. While she didn’t frame it in terms of this debate, Dervla McTiernan, in the meet-the-author event I attended, said about writing her Cormac Reilly trilogy, that she didn’t want to write a long procedural series, because they tend to be episodic without overall narrative arcs. She wanted to challenge her character Cormac; she wanted him to have a narrative arc which would see him changed by the end. That said, she did admit that Cormac might re-appear some time in the future!
Some sources
I found a few discussions on the internet that made some good points regarding the series vs stand-alone debate. The main ones were the Kill Zone blog (a joint blog), Carol Wyer, and Career Authors.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether you are author or reader. Do you prefer one or the other, or don’t you care? Over to you …
This might be a first for me, an obituary-style post for an academic/literary scholar rather than for an author. However, this post seemed appropriate as, Elizabeth Webby, who died last month, is someone whom I’ve mentioned several times in my blog due to her having written in areas that are of interest to me. Specifically, these areas were colonial Australian literature and contemporary Australian writers, particularly women writers. I heard about her death from the Association of the Study of Australian Literature, for which she was a founding member and of which she was President from 1988 to 1990.
A significant legacy
Julieanne Lamond, current president of ASAL and co-editor of its online journal, Australian Literary Studies, has posted a tribute to her on ASAL’s website. It is well worth reading, because it outlines her major roles and achievements, which include her being Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney from 1990 to 2007. This involved her “supporting works of scholarly infrastructure including the AustLit Database, numerous scholarly editions, and the online Australian Poetry Library”. I have often used AustLit (albeit much of the content is paywalled) and the Australian Poetry Library (which seems not to be currently available, perhaps due to lack of ongoing support?) Webby also edited the Southerly literary journal for over a decade.
However, my “experience” of Webby has also been more specific. While I had come across her before, I became seriously aware of her through The Cambridge companion to Australian literature (1996), which she edited. This book is a little different from those “companion” style books which contain alphabetic encyclopaedic entries related to their chosen topic. Rather, it comprises essays which provide a partly chronological, partly thematic, survey of Australian literature starting with “Indigenous texts and narratives”. It works, in other words, more like a text book or history than a reference book. I often dip into it, when I am researching specific aspects of Australian literature, and find it sometimes useful sometimes not, depending on how well my particular interest has been covered.
However, I had came across Webby earlier via her essay on colonial poets in Debra Adelaide’s A bright and fiery troop (1988), which is another book of essays on Australian literature, but this one limited to 19th century women writers. It’s another book I often dip into when researching earlier writers.
Both these books, though, were in my ken before I started blogging. Skip a couple of decades to 2018 when I wrote a Monday Musings post titled Literary culture in colonial Australia drawing on Webby’s work. It was fascinating research, both for what she found and for the sorts of sources she used and their varying levels of completeness. Then in 2021, I wrote another Monday Musings on the Irish-Australian poet, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796-1880), using research by Elizabeth Webby and another academic, Anna Johnston. These are just two examples of Webby’s work but, as Lamond of ASAL writes, her research interests spanned the breadth and depth of Australian literature, from early colonial literature, through early 20th century writers like Miles Franklin and Barbara Baynton, and mid-20th century ones like Patrick White, to those more contemporary to her own times like Frank Moorhouse, Elizabeth Harrower and Joan London. She was also, apparently, a loved and respected teacher, academic supervisor and mentor.
All this is important and significant, but another measure of who she was can be found in the funeral notice for her in the Sydney Morning Herald where can be found the following request, “In lieu of floral tributes, please consider a donation to the Indigenous Literary Foundation”. Presumably that was her own request – or from her family based on their knowledge of her passions. Either way, it’s the icing on the cake. Vale, indeed, Elizabeth Webby.
Whispering Gums 