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The Invisible Thread series: Bill Gammage

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The Biggest Estate on EarthThe Invisible Thread, an anthology of 100 years of writing from the Canberra region, will hit bookshop shelves on 22 October. In the meantime I’ve been very busy working with a filmmaker on a series of interviews with the authors. Today the very first of them has been launched. Chatting with Bill Gammage, one of Australia’s most eminent historians, was such a delight. Just back from a trip to Europe he was still suffering from jet lag, not that it was possible to tell. Listening to him talk was fascinating.

While we were setting up the cameras and doing sound checks he revealed that he tells his PhD students not to take longer than three years to complete their theses even though The Biggest Estate on Earth took him 12 years. ‘I tell them to ignore my example,’ he said with a smile.

Those 12 years certainly paid off. The Biggest Estate on Earth is a groundbreaking work, one that should be prescribed reading for all Australians. While overseas he received notification that he’d won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian History, the richest literary prize our country has to offer. Other awards have since followed, and no doubt there’ll be more. They are all well deserved.

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An extract from The Biggest Estate is included in The Invisible Thread, and I spoke with Bill about his book, why our current land management strategies are inept, and why he hopes his book will increase respect for Aboriginal achievements.

Calling on the crowd

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Crowd-funding is the new big thing, and it’s raising big bucks. Not surprisingly, the notoriously under-resourced arts sector has been quick to recognise the opportunities it offers to access a new kind of funding. Pozible, Australia’s largest crowd-funding platform, has only been going since 2010 but it has already supported over 1300 projects and raised over $2.5 million dollars in funding.

So how does it work? Individuals or organisations post a project on their website, set a target and a deadline, and then hit social media calling for donations. Here’s the catch. If the target isn’t reached by the campaign’s end none of the donations are processed and the organisation doesn’t receive a cent. So setting realistic goals is important.

The Queensland Literary Awards is one example of a successful Pozible campaign. When Premier Campbell Newman cut the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards in order to save the comparatively small sum of $240,000, the literary community was stunned. In response, a passionate group of writers launched a Pozible campaign to enable the awards to continue, albeit with reduced prize money. The public have enthusiastically supported their campaign and with just days left to go they have already exceeded their $20,000 target by over $8000.

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Further afield, one campaign that is looking less likely of meeting its goal is St. Mark’s Bookstore in New York City. They are aiming to raise $23,000 via crowd-funding site Lucky Ant. It’s tough times for bookshops and in order to survive St. Mark’s needs funds to relocate their store and develop a more sophisticated online presence. As I write this they have only a week to go and are still short by $8000. St. Mark’s is an iconic bookstore and we need to prevent these havens of bookish goodness from disappearing, so fingers crossed there’s a late rush and they meet their goal.

Meanwhile I’m concentrating on our own Pozible campaign to raise funds for The Invisible Thread, an anthology of 100 years of writing by authors who have a connection with Canberra, edited by yours truly. The book has already received support from the ACT Government, Centenary of Canberra and National Year of Reading, among others, but we are still short of funds to cover printing costs and pay authors for appearances at our scheduled events. We’re hoping that we follow in the Queensland Literary Awards’ successful footsteps. At just $5000 we think we’ve set a realistic goal. We have already raised over $3000, and with 31 days to go we’re quietly hopeful. The great thing about Pozible is that it’s not all one-way. There are rewards on offer for those who donate, including advance copies of The Invisible Thread and VIP invitations to Woven Words, a forthcoming event of words and music with readings from our authors and music from the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.

So head on over to Pozible and check out all the wonderful projects that you can help make a reality. There are feature films and exhibitions and debut EPs to support. Oh, and a little book called The Invisible Thread. Supporting that one would make a certain person very happy indeed. 

The Canberra Times_The Invisible Thread

Beneath the surface

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ACTThere is a myth that nothing happens in Canberra and, I must confess, sixteen years ago when I arrived here I credited that myth.

My first memory is of driving along Northbourne Ave, past Civic. ‘That’s the city,’ my brother thumbed. I looked out of the window and experienced mild panic. Where? I thought. I can’t see anything. I grew up in Melbourne but had spent the last three years in England, a cramp of a country with a leaden sky that had pressed against me for far too long. My arrival in Canberra marked a blue sky soar of a day. The sun tap danced, the woolly hills unfurled gracefully. And there was so much space; something I had been craving. Yet I wanted more from a city than what appeared to be a bunch of blank-faced office blocks, a centre that blurred past in a matter of mere seconds. I wanted vibrancy and art and boldness. This place looked bland and lifeless.

I was soon to discover that Canberra is adept at trickery. On the surface it can appear to be one way, but look a little closer, delve a little deeper, and something entirely different is revealed. Canberra is anything but boring. It is a place of ideas and imagination and experimentation. In 1999, I started working for Muse, then Canberra’s monthly arts magazine, and by 2001 I was its editor. I was out most nights of the week soaking up all the arts and cultural practice that this city had to offer and I couldn’t possibly get to every theatre show or exhibition or book launch. Canberra was, and still is, a richly creative city.

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I left Muse long ago and the magazine has since folded, but now I find myself once again inviting readers to experience the diversity of artistic practice that comes from our region, this time through The Invisible Thread, an anthology of 100 years of Canberra writing.

In 2009, both Melbourne and Brisbane produced anthologies of work from their cities. At the time I was talking with Anne-Maree Britton, then director of the ACT Writers Centre, about how Canberra really needed an anthology of its own. For its small population Canberra punches above its literary weight and yet so often our city flies under the radar. It was time we did something about it.

A few days later I happened to receive some promotional information about Canberra’s 2013 centenary celebrations. The timing couldn’t have been better; the centenary offered the perfect opportunity to make an anthology happen. An advisory committee of local authors (Marion Halligan, Alan Gould and Adrian Caesar) and literary experts was assembled. Halstead Press came on board, and we secured funding from the ACT Government and the Centenary of Canberra. Everything began to roll from there. The committee spent one year reading through the work of over 150 writers to create a shortlist from which I made final selections. The Invisible Thread, is different in both purpose

and scope to the Brisbane and Melbourne anthologies. It includes fiction, nonfiction and poetry, giving readers a taste of the diversity of work to emerge from the region during the last 100 years. Writers such as AD Hope, Roger McDonald, Bill Gammage, Judith Wright, Kevin Gilbert, David Campbell, Jackie French, Humphrey McQueen, Jack Heath, Rosemary Dobson, Clive Hamilton, Manning Clark, Omar Musa, Marion Halligan, Alex Miller, Les Murray, Kate Grenville and Garth Nix. The list goes on and on.

After years of work the anthology is now ready to emerge. As I write this the book has been typeset and the cover design is underway. The Invisible Thread will be in bookshops in October and will be launched at the National Library in November as part of the National Year of Reading’s Legacy event. It’s exciting times.

And yet we still have one hurdle to get over. We are short of funds to cover the final portion of printing costs and pay authors for appearances at our scheduled events. Last month we launched a fundraising campaign via crowd-funding site, Pozible. We’ve already raised over $4000 of our $5000 target and we have until 9 September to secure the remainder. The way Pozible works is that if the target isn’t reached by the campaign’s end none of the donations are processed and we don’t receive a cent. But the great thing about Pozible is that it’s not all one-way. There are rewards on offer for those who donate, including advance copies of The Invisible Thread and VIP invitations to Woven Words, an event featuring acclaimed authors Alex Miller, Alan Gould and Sara Dowse, alongside music from the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. So if you value literature and reading please support our Pozible campaign and help us get the word out to the nation about how fabulous Canberra really is.

This post was first published on Her Canberra.

Today is the day

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thesoundofsilencelargeToday is Red Nose Day, a day to raise funds to help to save the lives of babies and support bereaved families of miscarriage, neonatal and infant death. So it seems like an appropriate moment to reflect on how The Sound of Silence, a collection of women’s stories about miscarriage, has been received. It was published nine months ago (I’m sure you see the irony) and the response has been everything we hoped it would be and more.

Editing this book was an emotional experience and the launches in Canberra and Melbourne were unlike any others I have attended. At both of them strangers — women and men, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and sisters — came up to me to tell me their intensely personal stories of loss, the reasons why they had come to these launches to buy this book.

Since then I have received many emails from readers thanking me for the anthology and telling me how it has helped them. These messages have been humbling. Like this one from Charmian:

I have just sat and read this book from cover to cover! As a mum of two (six, including my angel babies) these stories touched my heart and soul in a way that no other books about pregnancy loss have. I experienced miscarriages when none in my circle of friends had, and felt alone as I waded through loss and grief. The final three miscarriages were particularly hard, given they all occurred in seven months. We have not gone on to have more babies, and I still feel my family is not quite complete. Thanks again for this wonderful resource.

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And this one from Justine:

I have just finished reading The Sound of Silence. I must admit it sat on my bedside table for a couple of days before I found the courage to open it. I was anxious about the emotions it might stir up within me. It is a brilliant book, it allowed me to realise I am not alone in my grief and the feelings experienced are so normal.

One of my regrets is that despite our best efforts to encourage submissions from men we did not receive any. Men are often forgotten in the grief of miscarriage, so I was disappointed that we weren’t able to represent their stories and perspectives. It was, however, heartening to receive emails from men, like this one:

Thank you for publishing The Sound of Silence. While it is mostly written for females, it is also an excellent book for (potential) fathers to read as well — some of them also experience similar emotional symptoms when their partner miscarries 🙁

When I wrote a post for Mamamia about the anthology and my own miscarriage it received an overwhelming number of comments. There are so many women and men out there who need to talk about their experiences. Today I’m remembering Rafael, the baby I miscarried at twelve weeks. I no longer feel sad about his loss, but blessed that he was, and is still, a part of our family. I am also thankful for the three beautiful children I was able to bring into this world, and conscious that there are many couples who are not so fortunate. These stories are the ones that break my heart the most.

At the Melbourne launch a woman told me about her daughter who she has watched go through seven pregnancies, none of which have made it to term. As she told me this story, and the emotional toll it has taken on them all, she wept for her daughter and her lost grandbabies. Her story is one of many. If you know someone who has had a miscarriage, who may still be struggling through grief, today is the day to reach out. All it takes is a simple ‘How are you?’ and the willingness to listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQXM1bqywO0

Almost (not) famous

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Here are ten reasons why you shouldn’t despair if you have an unpublished manuscript. These famous rejections are sure to cheer you up:

1. Can you imPossum Magicagine a world without Possum Magic? Apparently many publishers could. Mem Fox’s classic was rejected nine times over five years. Little Hush would have remained invisible were it not for Omnibus Books in Adelaide. Originally called Hugh, the Invisible Mouse, Omnibus suggested changing the mice to possums, and the rest, as they say, is history. Since 1983 Possum Magic has sold 3.5 million copies, making it the bestselling Aussie kids’ book of all time. And speaking of magic leads me to…

2. Harry Potter, of course. It was turned down by twelve publishers including Penguin and HarperCollins. In the end it was a child who made it all happen. Bloomsbury only took it on because the CEO’s eight-year-old daughter begged him to print it. Thanks to that little girl JK Rowling is now the world’s richest author. In one year alone (2007–2008) it was estimated that she made $300 million, and it’s rumoured that she’s now a cool $50 mill richer than the Queen. Enough said.

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We Need to talk about Kevin3. Even authors with a publishing track record sometimes struggle to get their newest work into print. Lionel Shriver’s controversial seventh book, We Need to Talk About Kevin, was rejected 30 times before finding a publisher. It went on to win the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction. If you haven’t read this book yet go out and buy it immediately. Yes, immediately. It is compelling, disturbing, haunting and beautifully written. A stunning book that I can’t get out of my head.

4. This one has got to break some kind of world record for the number of rejections it received. Chicken Soup for the Soul, by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, was turned down 140 times. Publishers claimed it was ‘too positive’ and that ‘anthologies don’t sell’. I bet Canfield and Hansen have been laughing their way to the bank since Health Communications took a chance on it. The 200-title multimillion dollar series has since sold more than 112 million copies in over 40 languages. Touché.

5. Ted Geisel, aka Dr Seuss, was rejected by 27 publishers before Random House picked up his first book. Just imagine if he’d chucked it in after the twenty-seventh rejection! We’d be without Which-What-Whos and Fox in Socks and Green Eggs and Ham — my children would be none too pleased about that. And I’m guessing there are a few others who might agree. Seuss was advised by one rejecting publisher that his work was ‘too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling’. In contrast, former president of Random House, Bennett Cerf once said, ‘I’ve published any number of great writers, from William Faulkner to John O’Hara, but there’s only one genius on my authors’ list. His name is Ted Geisel.’ At the time of his death in 1991, Dr Seuss’ 44 books had sold more than 200 million copies.

6. Stephen King may never have been published if it wasn’t for his wife. King threw his novel Carrie in the bin, but his wife retrieved it and encouraged him to keep going. He did so, but it wasn’t smooth sailing from there. He received 30 rejections for Carrie, with one publisher commenting, ‘We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.’ Eventually it was picked up by Doubleday (who had previously rejected three earlier novels of King’s) for a modest $2500 advance. The book that would ‘not sell’ found its way into the hands of over one million readers in its first year. King’s books have now sold over 350 million copies making him the third richest author in the world.

Lord of the Flies7. Lord of the Flies is a standard on school curricular across the globe but William Golding’s classic novel was initially rejected by 20 publishers. One nastily pronounced it to be ‘an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull’. I bet they wish they could take those words back now. Golding went on to win a Nobel Prize for Literature, and, in 2005, TIME magazine ranked it as one of the top 100 English-language novels ever written.

8. To say I’m a John Grisham fan would be untrue, but he certainly has a devoted following. It wasn’t always that way. His first novel, A Time to Kill, was rejected by 16 agents and 12 publishers. Of course when the book did make it into print it became the first in a series of bestsellers. The sweetest kind of revenge.

9. Who knew that a story told from the point of view a seagull that flew for pleasure, not just survival, would become a bestseller? Certainly not the 18 publishers who rejected Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Macmillan finally took it on and the book sold more than a million copies in its first year. Then came a movie, a Neil Diamond soundtrack, and a paperback version that sold 7.25 million copies, despite one publisher’s claim that ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback’.

The diary of Anne Frank10. Pretty much everyone has read The Diary of Anne Frank, right? But the English language rights were passed up by 16 publishers, including Knopf whose reader dismissed it as ‘very dull’. He advised: ‘Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when the subject was timely, I don’t see that there would have been a chance for it.’ This was in 1950. It was Doubleday who finally published the diary and made it one of the bestselling books in history, with over 30 million copies sold. Take that, Knopf!

So if you have an unpublished manuscript in a bottom drawer and a growing pile of rejection letters, take heart. You might just be the next Golding or Grisham poised on the brink of stardom.

And even if you’re not plucked from the jaws of a publisher’s bottomless slush pile it may not signal the end. The landscape of publishing is currently undergoing a period of dramatic change. The digital age means that rejected manuscripts (both good and bad) can find their way online. Perhaps a list of famous rejections such as this will soon be antiquated.

This post was first published on Overland literary journal’s blog.