Book Launch: Spinning the Dream

Award-winning historian and author, Anna Haebich, launched her new book; Spinning the Dream, in front of around 100 people at the Brisbane Town Hall.

Special guests included, Paul Barclay of Australia Talks ABC Radio National, Rachel Nolan (pictured with Anna) the State Labor Member for Ipswich, Darryl Kickett of the Aboriginal Health Council of WA and Lilla Watson who performed the Welcome to Country on behalf of the Murri people.

About the book
Spinning the Dream re-evaluates the experience of assimilation in Australia, providing a meticulously researched and masterfully written assessment of its implications for Australia's Indigenous and ethnic minorities and for immigration and refugee policy.

Marcella Polain shortlisted for Commonwealth Writers' Prize

The Edge of the World by Marcella Polain has been shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the category of Best First Novel in South East Asia and the South Pacific.

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is a prestigious annual event which rewards and celebrates excellence in contemporary fiction writing throughout the Commonwealth.

The winners will be announced on 13 March 2008.

Praise for The Edge of the World

"an intense, stark, poetic... moving work." Nicholas Jose

"an unforgettable, courageous and moving act of poetic testimony, which will make an important contribution to the rewriting of the historic truth of the Armenian Genocide." Marion Campbell

"...blazes brilliantly with historical revelation... A lyrically haunting novel, utterly entrancing and compelling." Gail Jones

John Kinsella wins Christopher Brennan Award

The Fellowship of Australian Writers (Vic) announced West Australian poet, John Kinsella, as this year's winner of the Christopher Brennan Award.

The Christopher Brennan is given to an "Australian poet who has written work of sustained quality and distinction".

It was first awarded in 1973 and previous recipients include John Tranter, Dorothy Porter, Bruce Dawe, Gwen Harwood, Faye Zwicky, Les Murray, Peter Porter, Philip Salom and Geoff Page.

The Awards Presentation Ceremony will take place on Friday 28 March at Deakin University in Melbourne.

Caroline Caddy shortlisted for Adelaide Writers' Week Poetry Award

Caroline Caddy's latest collection of poetry, Esperance: new and selected poems, was shortlisted for the prestigious John Bray Poetry Award worth $15,000 this week. The Award will be announced at the Adelaide Writers' Festival on Sunday 2 March.

Caroline Caddy was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1944 and spent her childhood in the United States and Japan. Since then, she has lived much of her life in Western Australia, raised two children, published seven books of poetry, received national and state fellowships for creative writing, and won the WA Week Literary Award for Poetry and the National Book Council’s Banjo Award in 1992. Her work has been broadcast on ABC Radio National and appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.

Fellow poets up for the John Bray Poetry Prize include Ken Bolton, John Tranter, Claire Gaskin, J. S. Harry and Geoff Page.

Praise for Caroline Caddy
... a master poet with a style and panache all her own - Andrew Burke, West Australian

The poetry is full of words in action and action in words... the sense of an educated sensibility responding to the sensuous universe - Graham Rowlands, Overland

Caddy is at her most stunning when she describes what she's seeing around her - Nikki Gemmell, Quadrant