Mark's Say, October 2017
We’ve just completed judging the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. The Readings judges Gabrielle Williams (Malvern), Marie Matteson (Carlton), Annie Condon (Hawthorn) and Ann Le Lievre (Library sales and in absentia) were joined by myself and writer Christos Tsiolkas to choose a winner from the six books shortlisted by the Readings judges: The Windy Season by Sam Carmody, Australia Day by Melanie Cheng, Jean Harley Was Here by Heather Taylor Johnson, The Good People by Hannah Kent, The Lost Pages by Marija Peričić and From the Wreck by Jane Rawson. It was a lively two hours, moderated by our very able prize manager Bronte Coates, who kept us focused and on message: ‘No, the Prize can’t be shared; there can only be one winner.’ Judging is always subjective and possibly unfair and it’s probably never ‘right’. Our discussion was, in my opinion, respectful and considered. The final choice a unanimous one and it will be revealed on 24 October.
Our previous guest judges for our relatively young award were Hannah Kent and Maxine Beneba Clarke, so we were all interested to hear from Christos. Some of us hadn’t met him previously, but we were all impressed by his generosity and openness. We were interested to hear what he’d been doing and excited to hear that he’s finished a draft of a new novel about the apostle St Paul, which will be published in 2018. Christos, of course, is best known for The Slap, a stinging contemporary take on middle-class Australia, so a historical novel is a bit of a departure. Of course, it had involved a considerable amount of research, travelling and reading.
‘Another thing I’ve been doing,’ he confided, ‘is reading poetry’. Like many of us, I suppose, he hadn’t read any poetry since university and felt it as a gap, so he resolved to read a poem a day. ‘Poems are short so it doesn’t take long.’ Christos talked excitedly about his project and the way he’d learned about poetic structure, and about words and language. Intrigued, I did a bit of digging around our shelves for some books I thought might help if one wanted to embark on a similar project; the best seemed to be The Oxford Book of English Verse by Christopher Ricks, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch, Contemporary Australian Poetry edited by Martin Langford; Language for a New Century by Tina Chang, and the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry by J.D. McClatchy.
You may not know it, but Readings has produced a lot of fascinating podcasts with authors, publishers and booksellers. I particularly liked bookseller Sean O’Beirne’s conversation with Booker Prize shortlisted author, George Saunders. My favourite so far, though, is my conversation with author and bookseller Leanne Hall. Leanne planned to be a lawyer but has ended up an award-winning children’s author, a children’s bookseller and manager of the Readings Foundation. She talks about writing, bookselling, censorship, diversity, philanthropy, and Amazon – an intriguing mix.
We were saddened to learn of the passing of Agnes Nieuwenhuizen. Agnes was a great champion of youth literature in Australia. She was an early advocate for young-adult literature and set up the Centre for Youth Literature at Victoria’s State Library. She also established the biennial Reading Matters youth literature conference. She was driven by a vision of giving young people the opportunity to explore the world through reading.
