June 09 Advances

ADVANCES

The latest literary news and musings from the Editor's desk ...

Calibre Prize
Since announcing the joint winners of the third Calibre Prize, we have received many compliments for Jane Goodall’s and Kevin Brophy’s winning essays, and various expressions of support for Calibre. Several of these appear on our website, and this month we also publish letters from Elisabeth Holdsworth – inaugural winner of the Calibre Prize in 2007 – and from Nicholas Jose, who also writes about the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature in this issue.It is very pleasing to be able to announce that Copyright Agency Limited, through its Cultural Fund, will sponsor the fourth Calibre Prize, for which ABR now seeks entries. Once again the Prize is worth $10,000, making it one of the world’s most lucrative awards for a new essay. This year we are adding a second Prize – Young Calibre – which is open to those aged twenty-one and under. Young Calibre is worth $3000 – not a bad start for a brilliant secondary student or undergraduate. More details appear on page 9. For entry form and guidelines for the Calibre Prize, click here; for entry form and guidelines for Young Calibre, click here.

Poetry Prize
Entries are also also sought for the sixth ABR Poetry Prize, one of the country’s most prestigious awards for a new poem. The winner will receive $4000. The closing date is 1 December 2009, and the guidelines and entry form appear on page 33 and on our website.

Winter Reverie
The Mildura Writers’ Festival will stoke the hearth of literary conversation again this July (16–19). This festival is firmly established as one of our leading literary events. This year’s guests include, among others, ABR Chair, Morag Fraser, and poet Robert Gray, whose latest memoir, The Land I Came Through Last, was praised by Ian Templeman in our March 2009 issue as ‘mesmeric [and] of powerful emotion and poetry’. Full program and booking details are available at http://www.artsmildura.com.au/writers.

Bay of Contented Writers
Several of this month’s contributors will be guests at this year’s Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, the main program of which runs 7–9 August. Peter Goldsworthy (‘The Bet’, page 28) discusses the power of short stories and his influences and inspirations; Nicholas Jose appears with Linda Jaivin for a session on China’s literary character; and Shirley Walker (‘Bitter Fruit’ page 25) discusses the ethics of biography after the festival launch of her latest book, Ghost at the Wedding, which Brenda Niall reviews on page 46. For the full program and ticketing details, visit: http://www.byronbaywritersfestival.com.au.

Discursive Types
The Independent Type: Books and Writing in Victoria continues at the State Library of Victoria through July–August with a busy program of activities, in addition to the display of local literary miscellany and rarities. Thursday nights throughout the exhibition are reserved for discussions and events that extend its survey of domestic writing practice. These include a special session on 6 August (6 p.m.) featuring ABR Editor, Peter Rose, in discussion with former Editor of The Monthly, Sally Warhaft, and new ABR contributor Chris Flynn (‘Unflinching depths’, page 61). The session, titled ‘Literary Subscriptions’, will address the importance and role of literary publications in Australia’s past, present and future, and will be chaired by exhibition curator and former Editor of Going Down Swinging, Steve Grimwade. Full exhibition and events details are available at http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/goto/independent-type.

Breathless achievement
Tim Winton has won this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award, worth $42,000, for Breath (Hamish Hamilton). It is the fourth time Winton has won the coveted prize, making him the first person to win our premier literary prize four times in his own right (two of Thea Astley’s four Awards were shared). Described by James Ley in our May 2008 issue as containing ‘some of Winton’s best writing since Cloudstreet’, Breath deals with the ‘idea that one can feel most alive when courting death’ in the contexts of surfing and erotic asphyxiation.

Open Page
Award-winning novelist Michelle de Kretser inaugurates this new monthly feature on the back page. Our aim in presenting ‘Open Page’ is to find out more about some of the writers whom Australians most like to read. We have drawn intermittently on the famous Proust Questionnaire, so called only because Marcel Proust was the most famous person to complete it (twice in fact, when he was aged thirteen and twenty). Nevertheless, all but two of the questions are our own. We won’t enquire about our monthly subject’s favourite bird (Proust: the capricious swallow) or favourite occupation (‘loving’) or most marked characteristic (‘a craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired’). We will leave that to Vanity Fair.

Apropos Michelle de Kretser’s answers, we like the one about the proxy she sends to writers’ festivals.

Changes at ABR
So much intensive work went into our new design that we decided to bring it forward by two months. We hope you like the new look. Let us know what you think of it. And a reminder: this is one of two double issues we publish each year. We’ll be back in September. Enjoy the winter issue!