AustLit

'This article examines the role of Queensland's film festival network, focusing on how regional festivals are central to the development of the screen industry beyond the metropolitan centres. The research is based on a mapping project of film festivals in Queensland undertaken in 2018, which included interviews with festival organisers and industry professionals. 68 active festivals were identified across Queensland, of which 45% took place in Brisbane. This article investigates both the value of film festivals and the challenges for their economic sustainability in Queensland's screen culture and industry.' (Publication abstract)

'Writing the Australian Beach is the first book in fifteen years to explore creative and cultural representations of this iconic landscape, and how writers and scholars have attempted to understand and depict it. Although the content chiefly focuses on Australia, the beach as both a location and idea resonates deeply with readers around the world. This edited collection includes three sections. Forms of Beach Writing examines the history of beach writing in Australia and in a number of forms: screenwriting, social media writing, and food writing. In turn Multiplicities of Australian Beach Writing examines how forms of writing-poetry, travel writing, horror film, and memoir-engage with some specific beaches in Australia. And, finally, Reading the Beach as a Text considers how the beach itself functions in cultural narratives: how we walk the beach; the revealing story of beach soccer; and the design and use of ocean baths. Given its scope, the collection offers a unique resource for scholars of Australian culture and creative writing, and for all those interested in Australian beaches.' (Publication summary) 

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'The inclusion of memoir in an experienced author’s oeuvre is interesting although not uncommon. Memoir often reveals much about a writer: their childhood, their memories, their motivations to pursue their chosen career pathway. Interestingly, in the case of two prominent Australian authors, the memoir allows for a passionate investigation of landscape and how it permeates through their lives and their writing. In this article, I explore two examples of writers who have been inspired — openly and explicitly — by the beach: Tim Winton and Robert Drewe. Both are from Western Australia and both are fascinated and influenced by the coastal landscape. This is also apparent in their fiction in which characters use the beach as a touchstone or comfort. Winton and Drewe have written five memoirs between them, ranging from 1993 to 2016. Both authors make clear that these works are inspired by their relationship with landscape — particularly coastal landscapes on the western coast of Australia. By investigating these two authors’ works of memoir — both bound by their ongoing appreciation and inspiration of Australian landscape — this article examines how these coastal memoirs reveal how landscape can represent notions of national identity. The Australian coast acts as both a space of awe and solace in Winton’s work while being inevitably intertwined in ‘memories and murder’ in the memoirs of Drewe.'   (Publication abstract)

'The Australian beach has often been considered in academic approaches as a place of binaries – focusing on either the mythic (Fiske, Hodge and Turner 1987) or the ordinary (Morris 1998). An edge to the Australian continent, the liminal space of the beach is one that has received some attention. Using Edward Soja’s (1996) ‘Thirdspace’ concept allows the beach to challenge the space as a liminality and emerge as a more complex beachspace, both mythic and ordinary and more all at once. The Australian beach is a place of significant beauty, while simultaneously a place of risk and danger. Visitors to the space are immediately warned to only swim between the flags, and many beaches are patrolled for the majority of the day all throughout the year. Technology has been employed to identify risk despite the inherent unpredictability of the beach (such as shark sighting technology, weather predictions, and wave cameras), with an aim to provide a safe, everyday space available to all Australians to use. The potential risks of accidental death are high on the beach; however, many representations of death tend to include homicide or suicide. ‘Facing death’ is interested in examining how Australian writers of the beach portray death. Classic texts like Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957) are discussed alongside more contemporary texts, including Fiona Capp’s Night Surfing (1996), Tim Winton’s Dirt Music (2001), and Romy Ash’s Floundering (2012). These writers portray death as an inevitability or a continual threat. Films such as Newcastle (2008) represent accidental death in a tight knit local community; in comparison Blackrock (1997) deals with both murder and suicide. This paper illustrates how examining the beach as a more complex space by interrogating Australian writing on the subject allows for an interesting understanding of how death is represented on the Australian beach.' (Publication abstract)

'Next year, 2018, will be thirty years since creative practice was included as a field of postgraduate research in the so-called Strand Report (1998). Since that time, the acceptance of creative practice research degrees has flourished both in Australia and internationally. This important and substantial book represents many of the key researchers in the Australian higher education sector for the creative arts, and thus is worthy of a re-examination in the light of a collection of articles dealing with the current state of the creative practice PhD. Many of these authors have, indeed, won government funding to pursue research projects in this space and the wealth of their knowledge and experience shines through in many of these chapters. The editors must be commended for the breadth of perspectives and expertise they have secured in this text.' (Introduction)