Review away

As part of this magazine’s commitment to the reviewing craft and to nurturing new critics, ABR is pleased to announce the 2004 Reviewing Competition (full details on page 17). We are offering three prizes in three separate categories: fiction, non-fiction/poetry and children’s books (including YA titles). The three main prize-winners will each receive $500 in cash and a future commission from ABR, plus publication of their successful entry in the magazine. The previous competition was run back in 2000, when Aviva Tuffield won the non-fiction category for her review of Inga Clendinnen’s Tiger’s Eye. Ms Tuffield subsequently reviewed for the magazine and joined the staff. She is now the Deputy Editor, and one of the judges of this year’s competition.

ASAL notes

The Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s Parody Night is notorious across the land. This year’s celebration of irreverence was held during the ASAL conference at Sydney University in July. ASAL also presents several prizes, chiefly the ALS (Australian Literary Society) Gold Medal. Previous winners have included Patrick White, Thea Astley and Richard Flanagan. This year’s recipient is Laurie Duggan, for Mangroves (UQP), the first book of poetry, surprisingly, to win the Gold Medal in a decade. The Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize for the best first collection was awarded to Michael Brennan for The Imageless World (Salt). David Gilbey, ASAL’s new honorary secretary (who reviews Peter Boyle’s Museum of Space in this issue), will write about the ASAL conference in the September issue.

Return to Posillipo

John Slavin’s profile of Shirley Hazzard on page 9 prompts ABR to do two things: to head to the Bay of Naples at the earliest opportunity, and publish more of his illuminating journalism. Fortunately, Dr Slavin is game, so look forward to more of his insights into our writers. Meanwhile, Julie Copeland’s interview with Shirley Hazzard, recorded during the same visit, will go to air on the ‘Sunday Morning’ programme on Radio National on August 8.

National gongs

National honours, like literary prizes, are wonderfully arbitrary. Each year, we marvel at the intricacies of municipal service and of the military hierarchy – not to mention the sacrifices of the athletes. Sometimes the gradations attract comment (like Paul Brunton in a previous issue of ABR, ‘Advances’ was mystified by Peter Porter’s modest OAM in the previous round). But the authorities got it right in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours, when two notable contributors to ABR were included in the Order of Australia: Morag Fraser ‘for service to journalism … and to the Melbourne Writers’ Festival’; and Brenda Niall ‘for service to Australian literature as an academic, biographer and literary critic’. Hearty congratulations to all three.

ADB announcement

Finally, the Australian Dictionary of Biography has a new General Editor with the appointment of Di Langmore, acting GE since 2001 and co-editor of Volume 16 of ADB. Dr Langmore is the author of several books, including Prime Minister’s Wives and a life of Maie Casey. Plans for 2004 include the completion of ADB online: ‘a freely available, illustrated, relational database that will allow structured and free-text Internet searches of all volumes of the ADB.’ MUP will publish Volume 17 (1981–90, A–K) in 2007.

Aspects of Australian life

Quite a broad category, you might be thinking, and seven eclectic publications are in the running for the Colin Roderick Award for 2003 (worth $10,000). Selected from 151 books, the short list for ‘the best book of the year dealing with any aspect of Australian life’ consists of Peter Carey’s My Life As a Fake; Brett D’Arcy’s The Mindless Ferocity of Sharks; Peter Goldsworthy’s Three Dog Night; Paul Hetherington’s Blood and Old Belief; Tom Keneally’s The Tyrant’s Novel; David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s Dark Victory; and John Van Tiggelen’s Mango Country. The winner will be announced in October.

Double your bonus

This month, new subscribers are entitled to choose between not one but two pairs of major releases: Helen Garner’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation or Rodney Hall’s The Last Love Story (both courtesy of Picador); and Robert Manne’s Sending Them Home or Paul McGeough’s Mission Impossible in the Quarterly Essay series. All this and ten issues of ABR. Not bad value for $67, or less if you are a student or concession holder. For more details, see the order form on page 63.