AustLit

'In March 2015, the Guardian online re-posted an editorial by Mawuna Remarque Koutonin titled ‘Why are white people expats when the rest of us are migrants?’ The entry prompted a digital storm of nearly 3,000 comments questioning the connotations of race surrounding the term ‘expatriate.’

'In the context of Australian literature, ‘expatriate’ is used without complication to refer to authors who choose to live overseas. A search of the AustLit database identifies 370 expatriate writers; the first three listed are Peter Carey, Peter Porter, and Clive James—all of whom are white. Do we assume that Australian expatriate writers are born in Australia, grow up Australian, speaking and writing English before leaving to live and write overseas? If so, does this mean that a migrant to Australia cannot also become an Australian expatriate writer?

'Born in Chile, Silvia Cuevas-Morales lived in Australia for 24 years before deciding to move to Spain. In Australia, her poetry was published in English in literary journals. She also wrote in Spanish and in the 1990s she was editor of several bilingual collections of Hispanic–Australian poetry. Since leaving Australia, she has published seven volumes of poetry. Although Cuevas-Morales became an Australian citizen at age 21, she does not appear in AustLit as an ‘expatriate’ author. Is it because of her place of birth? If so, why is British-born author Tobsha Learner—who lived in Australia from age 19 to 35, and who now lives in the USA—identified as an expatriate? Is the discrepancy because of race? Or is it culture and language?' (Publication abstract)

This essay argues that expanding the category of ‘expatriate’ to include Cuevas-Morales and others can significantly broaden our understanding of the transnational cultural production to which Australians from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds contribute.

'El contestador australiano y otros cuentos [The Australian answering machine and other stories] is the title of a collection of short stories written in Spanish by Uruguayan-born Ruben Fernández. It was published in 2008 in Montevideo by the well-regarded publishing house Del Sur Ediciones. In 2009 Fernández was interviewed by the Uruguayan newspaper El País and spoke about how his stories relate to his experience of thirty years as a migrant living in Australia. Many of the stories in this collection first appeared in Australia in the 1980s and early 1990s, a number of them as prize-winning entries in literary competitions, with several subsequently published in Spanish-language newspapers and magazines in Sydney. The Uruguayan publication is, in fact, a revised version of the 1993 book Querido Juan dos puntos, published in Sydney, with assistance from the Australia Council, by Cervantes Publications. This earlier collection was well received with reviews, interviews and front cover photographs appearing in the Spanish-language press in Australia at the time. Fernández is only one of a number of Spanish-speaking authors whose work flows between Australia, Latin America and Spain. In this article I discuss aspects of the literary infrastructure in Spanish in Australia that have supported the publication of fiction within this migrant community and analyse stories from El contestador australiano to demonstrate the transnational dimensions of Australian Spanish-language writing.' (Publication abstract)

This article discusses the book Lalomanu, a selection of poetry by Spanish-Australian writer, Jorge Salavert, written in response to the death of his daughter Clea in the tsumani that struck Samoa just after dawn on 29 September 2009. Salavert’s poetry is an attempt to come to terms with catastrophe, personal loss and grief. The poet knows that for many, a literature of grief and pain may produce not understanding or even empathy, but a turning away. In the haiku “Unmanageable” Salavert writes: “His grief is the plague. / Pain is too raw to handle. / Silence prevails.” For some readers, this literature of grief and mourning may move them only to the extent that they keep their distance; they do not respond, or do not even read, in order to avoid being affected by this very personal pain. And yet, in its expressions of grief and mourning, Salavert’s poetry also has the potential to move readers in ways that extend far beyond the personal. The majority of the collection appears in English, but a number of the poems appear in bilingual form, either Spanish and English, or Catalan and English, and this multilingual format, I will argue, is especially important in relation to the poet’s mourning. This essay's reading of Lalomanu is organised around three central concerns: literature and mourning; mourning and language; and the social engagement resulting from a literature of mourning. [Author's abstract]

As a researcher for AustLit, I have tried to identify and locate points of entry through which even a monolingual researcher might access and build awareness of Australia’s multilingual literatures. Community language newspapers, which have existed in Australian since the nineteenth century, and which continue with substantial circulations in the twenty-first century, are excellent resources if one is fluent in the respective language. Bilingual or multilingual magazines or newspapers are not as common, but can provide an English reading researcher with documentation of community literary activities that would otherwise remain inaccessible. These magazines are like islands – multilingual islands in the midst of the dominant monolingual literary culture. In the Australian literary context it may be appropriate to think of the production of literature in other languages as islands of literary activity where multiple languages are maintained amidst the surrounding English writing. In this essay I’ll discuss a number of literary journals that provide access to Australia’s multilingual literary activities. Two of these are indeed multilingual, carrying articles and creative writing in a number of languages. The third is bilingual, publishing content in English and Vietnamese only, but will be included it here as an indication of the breadth and significance of writing in Australia in languages other than English, writing that is diasporic and transnational as well as multilingual. (Author's abstract)

'Literature infrastructure' refers to the organisations within the literature sector that actively support writers and their work: state writers' centres, Varuna - The Writers' Centre, the Australian Society of Authors, literary journals, genre-based organisations, and writers' festivals.

The study aims to determine where each organisation sits in the 'supply chain' of support and what contribution it makes to the literature sector as a whole: what services and opportunities are offered to writers, how it contributes to the training and development of writers, whether it contributes to readership/audience development or community engagement, the extent of its national/international reach and how well it is served by its operational, financial and governance model.

The research also seeks to identify trends in the sector as well as gaps in the support currently available to Australian writers.