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Now is the season of shortlisted content! In recent weeks, so many awards have been decided – or at least shortlisted – that ABR would need a supplement to list them all. Awards, everyone knows, have their limitations and anomalies, but few people would object to the highlighting of writers’ latest works or the supplementing of their often modest incomes. One first novel that has attracted notice is Arabella Edge’s The Company, based on the Wreck of the Batavia. The author is currently in Africa, picking up the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the best first novel in South-East Asia and the South Pacific region. The Company has also been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award (of which I am a judge). On her return, Ms Edge will visit Melbourne to take part in a discussion about the notorious shipwreck and the new Australian opera Batavia. Jointly sponsored by ABR, Opera Australia, and Reader’s Feast, this will take place at the Reader’s Feast Bookstore in Melbourne (see page seven for details). At this public forum, I shall also be introducing Peter Goldsworthy and Richard Mills. It is one of several literary events that ABR is planning with major organisations and institutions.
In choosing our cover image with Isobel Crombie of the NGV, I was conscious of the pertinence of Anne Ferran’s lambent photograph to this What Women Tell issue, with its series of reviews of books by, or about, women who have contributed so notably to our cultural history including: Christina Stead, Margaret Whitlam, and Hilary McPhee. The new Australian film based on Dorothy Porter’s The Monkey’s Mask prompts our La Trobe University Essay: David McCooey’s questioning piece about the business of adaptation.
Juno Gemes, one of whose arresting portraits of the poet Robert Adamson appears with a review of his latest collection of poems, makes a sound point in her letter published elsewhere in this issue. ABR should acknowledge the photographer when reprinting images and, wherever possible, we will. Sometimes, however, it is not possible. Usually, we rely on publishers for photographs, and they don’t always come with acknowledgments. But we’ll try.
We are grateful to readers for their generally positive responses to recent changes to the magazine. The openness to new features is particularly encouraging. One or two people have expressed concern about the seeming dearth of fiction reviews in the past two issues. This is certainly not deliberate, just seasonal. Fiction will always have a primary place in ABR – along with the other major literary genres. Indeed, 2001 is shaping up as a lively year for Australian fiction, with new novels from Tim Winton, Richard Flanagan, and Rod Jones. This issue carries reviews of new works by two of our most inventive novelists, David Foster and John Scott. The New in Paperback column notes the reappearance of several major works.
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