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PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARDS
The shortlist for the country's newest and richest literary prize, the Prime Minister's Literary Awards for Fiction and Non-fiction has been announced. The awards offer a single prize of $100,000 in each of the two categories.
While established Australian authors like Clive James, Germaine Greer, David Malouf, Dorothy Porter and Thomas Keneally are prominent in the list, the remaining ten authors have each only one or two books to their credit.
In the running for the fiction prize is newcomer Steven Conte's first novel 'The Zookeeper's War', and Mireille Juchau's second novel, 'Burning In'.
In the non-fiction category is Zarah Ghahramani's devastating account (with Robert Hillman) of her torture and imprisonment in Iran in her memoir 'My Life As A Traitor'. Also on the non-fiction list was 'A History of Queensland' by Raymond Evans and 'Vietnam: The Australian War', by Paul Ham.
The Prime Minister's Literary Awards were set up last year, "to recognise the major contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life".
Mr Rudd has acknowledged he will have difficulty in reading all the short-listed books in detail and will choose the two winners, "on the advice of judges".
No date has yet been set for the announcement of the winners.
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DFAT CANCELLED ART MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has cancelled its subscription to Art Monthly Australia. Until now the department had purchased about 200 copies a month at a cost of about $8000 for distribution to Australia's overseas missions.
According to the Australian newspaper, a DFAT official told Art Monthly editor Maurice O'Riordan the department was unlikely to ever renew its subscription.
While the department said the decision was the result of a general review of funding that included subscriptions to a number of magazines, O'Riordan told the Australian the timing was suspicious.
The decision comes just weeks after Art Monthly Australia ran a controversial photograph of a naked five-year-old girl on its cover, a response to the controversy sparked by the NSW police seizure of photographs by artist Bill Henson from the Oxley9 gallery in Sydney. No charges were laid and the Office of Film and Literature Classification cleared the photographs for publication.
Anthony Taylor, the director of DFAT's Cultural Diplomacy Section, has offered to put details of the magazine on the DFAT website in case any overseas missions wanted to subscribe "using their own funds".
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REG LINDSAY (1929-2008)
Australian country music veteran Reg Lindsay has died, at a Newcastle hospital, after a battle with pneumonia. He was aged 79.
Lindsay, who won three Golden Guitars and wrote more than 500 songs during his long career in Australia, also experienced some success overseas. He was the first Australian to be officially recognised in the home of country music, Nashville, with a plaque on the Walkway of Stars.
Though best known as a country singer, he made the pop charts in 1971 with 'Armstrong', his tribute to the American astronauts and their historic moon landing.
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VALRENE TWEEDIE (1925-2008)
The Australian dance community has lost one of its most respected mentors and performers, Valrene Tweedie, who died in Sydney at aged 83.
David McAllister, the artistic director of the Australian Ballet, said: "We have lost an important figure in our dance community and a wonderfully beautiful and charming lady."
Her career started at age 14 when she successfully auditioned for Vassily de Basile's Ballets Russes, and at the age of 15 toured on its 1940 North American season.
Dancing under the stage name Irina Lavrova, Tweedie toured Australia, then North and South America before returning to Australia in 1952. A prolific dance career in Australia followed, including a stint as a cast member of Cole Porter's popular musical 'Can-Can'. After 1956, she taught dance full-time.
In 1960, Tweedie founded Ballet Australia, a forum for new choreography. She retired from full-time teaching in 1985 but continued to mentor dancers. Tweedie last appeared on stage in Stephen Baynes's 'Requiem' in 2001, for the Australian Ballet.
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8 IRAQ ANCIENT SITES NOT VANDALISED
Despite widely publicised fears of damage to ancient sites in Iraq, a team of specialists has found that eight of the most important have not been vandalised after the 2003 war and occupation.
An international team of archaeologists made an unpublicised visit to southern Iraq in July and found no evidence of recent looting, but was necessarily brief, less than one hour being spent on some sites for security reasons.
The Art Newspaper reported that specialists visited eight sites, to the north of Basra: Ur, Ubaid, Eridu, Warka, Larsa, Tell el-Ouelli, Lagash and Tell el-Lahm. Despite the good news on looting, some military damage was found.
The survey was organised by Dr John Curtis, keeper of the British Museum's Middle East department, who was joined by three other international specialists.
Three senior Iraqi archaeologists joined them in Basra: Qais Hussein Raheed (director of excavations), Mehsin Ali (Iraq Museum) and Abdulamir al-Hamdani (antiquities inspector for Nasiriya).
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