AustLit

'When I was a child I knew where Paradise lived. It was in Barker’s Bookstore, Brisbane’s only bookshop, where I found my lifelong friend, The Magic Pudding, and discovered who I was, and what my country may be.' (Introduction)

'I write this in anguish. At the debasement of writers in this country. This is the most despairing time to be an Australian writer for as long as I can remember. Our Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, declared that an Australia of the future has to be agile, innovative and creative; and by his cosmopolitan nature once gave the nation’s artistic community hope that he would oversee a great flowering of the arts in the way a Whitlam did, or a Keating. We mistakenly assumed Mr Turnbull took pride in the worlds of artistic creativity and would nurture them as the mark of a mature and dynamic nation. That he would want the arts to flourish under his stewardship, to create a legacy of vision, daring and confidence.' (Introduction)

'The proposed changes to copyright have the potential to send Australian writing, in one lifetime, through an entire cycle from bust to boom and back to bust again. Sixty years ago, what Australians got to read was by and large dictated by people on the other side of the world. We were a literary colony. If the Productivity Commission has its way, we’ll be back to that same second-hand status.' (Introduction)

'As a child I was fortunate enough to have a bookshelf filled with great books from all around the world, but Australian children’s classics such as The Magic Pudding and Cole’s Funny Picture Books spoke to me in a way that even at a young age I recognised as unmistakably Australian. It is difficult to define exactly what that ‘Australian-ness’ is. It’s not just—or even—about seeing Australian animals or iconical Australian places and landmarks … it’s broader and deeper than that. It’s more of a feeling—a sort of freewheeling knockabout charm that, like Vegemite, is instantly identifiable.' (Introduction)

'Dear Ms Hopper,

Thank you for submitting this fascinating article. It's a great start, but we wonder if you've considered moving the location to better suit an international audience? This could work wonderfully well in a 'hardscrabble' Anglo-Irish context, or you might like to pursue our suggestions below!'

'It’s a strange kind of headline for us today, living in the era of Richard Flanagan and Liane Moriarty and Helen Garner and Michael Robotham. AUSTRALIAN NOVELISTS, the top line reads, and underneath: BOOKS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND. It’s not a front-page story, of course, literature is rarely that, but it’s in a reasonable spot: page 18 in the Brisbane Telegraph, 10 July 1926. It says: ‘The Australian novelist, Mr. Jack MacLaren, has published his twenty-fifth book, “The Isle of Escape”, which is a sex story, set in the South Seas. His wife is publishing a novel dealing with reincarnation, entitled “Which Hath Been”’. (I’d love to read both of these—they seem perfect for me—but finding them isn’t easy, as I’ll explain.)' (Introduction)

'The ecology of a culture may be as fragile, as precariously balanced, as the one we call Nature. We should be very sure of how that balance has been achieved and continues to work before we think of adjusting or ‘improving’ it.' (Introduction)

'Long before I was a full-time writer, I was a full-time reader.

'As a child growing up in rural South Australia, I read a diet of mostly English and American stories. I knew more about Mark Twain’s Mississippi River and Enid Blyton’s English woods and islands than I did about my own country. It felt rare and thrilling to find a story with Australian settings, characters and lives.' (Introduction)

'The Coalition Government has rightly made much recently of its policy to promote growth and jobs through its support of small and medium-size Australian businesses. The Australian publishing industry is made up of hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses. The independent Australian publishing industry, on which printers and allied trades also rely for much of their work, directly and indirectly employs thousands of skilled and professional workers. Abolishing territorial copyright would place Australian publishing at an impossible business disadvantage in relation to its overseas competitors. Some publishers would almost certainly be driven to the wall. An essential of any modern civilised nation is a robust independent publishing industry which can offer to the reading public the stories of its writers. The cultural independence and richness of any nation depends on the writers who tell the stories of that nation.' (Introduction)

'To: Malcolm, Bill,

'Cc: Queen Elizabeth, Head of State (you may remember me, you have given me a couple of medals and I met your late sister, Margaret), Richard Di Natale, leader Australian Greens (we haven’t met), Barnaby Joyce and all Independents

'Re: KPIs—‘Things is crook in Tallarook and there’s no dough in Dubbo …’ (Jack O’Hagan)' (Introduction)