Darlings,
it has been a while
I
recently had the absolute mind bending opportunity to interview Stella Prize
winning poet Eveyln Araluen about her stop-you-in-your-tracks collection Drop
Bear. She was here for a week long conference on Aboriginal literature at UTas– and the
program was wild. And I missed the whole thing. This was part if the inspiration to reinstate this monthly column of books and writing news from around lutruwita Tasmania.
Big news is that Brendan Colley’s The Signal Line has been shortlisted for The AgeBook of the Year (fiction). This novel, which is getting accolades left, right and centre, was also recognised in manuscript form – winning the Unpublished Manuscript Prize, Tasmanian Premier’s Literary AwardsWinners will be announced on September 8. .
Tasmanian writer and editor Zowie Douglas Kinghorn has recently been appointed editor of Voiceworks. You’ll find her distinct voice tweeting here.
Tasmanian
writer/illustrator team, Aunty Patsy Cameron and Lisa Kennedy, were shortlisted
for the Wilderness Society's new Karajia Award for Sea Country, Magabala Books
for Environmental Children's Lit by First Nations creators.
The Tamar Valley Writers Festival has just announced a ripper line up including Michael Mohamed Ahmed, Robbie Arnott, Meg Bignell and Melissa Lukashenko. It runs between 14-17 of October, with early bird tickets only on sale until August 29.
The festival is also hosting two in
conversation events in August, with Dr Norman Swan with Dr
Polly McGee, and then Norman in conversation with Goodlife Permaculture’s
Hannah Maloney, who is also the festival’s ambassador.
In book news a new collected from respected poet Karen Knight will be released in time for Christmas It will feature photographs by her partner, and newly recognised photographer Jules Witek. Karen is best known for her work Postcards from the Asylum, a collection of poems that look at notions of madness and incarceration and reference her time at Willow Court.
Karen Harrland’s new book, Daughter of the Plateau will be
launched at Fullers on Friday 5. The event looks like it’s already sold out, if
this one has the delights of her first book, Spinifex Baby, which won the National
Finch Memoir Prize, it will be worth the read.
I was invited to a gathering of influential bookish people which was last week. It was to get us talking about Tasmania Reads, an initiative of Libraries Tas and the State Government. It will take place for a week next March. A three tiered project, which acknowledges the parlous state of literacy in Tasmania, the project is encouraging innovative interpretations and has some inspired crew working on it. A lovely chat with Alexander from Black Swan Bookshop ensued and got me thinking about the fabulousness that was Nude Girls Reading, or whether Transportation Press should rise from its lengthy slumber.
In August it will be 50 years since Lake Pedder, the mythic
(for my generation and younger) pink sandy beach deep in some our wildest wildness.
Water(shed) is being launched to coincide with this. The book looks exquisite,
and features work from 50 artists alongside essays by leading Tasmanians
including Kate Crowley and Greg Lehman. Launching August 10 at Fullers.
In the North of the state, even the AGRIcultured festival is getting bookish. They have events with
Rees Campbell, about her new Eat More Wild Tasmanian, and Gardening Australia’s
Hannah Moloney and Costa Georgiadis, both of them published authors.
537 Days Winter by David Knoff is being launched at The Hobart
Bookshop on Friday 26th. He spent that long in Antarctica – the lock
down of the deep south.
And drop me a line, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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