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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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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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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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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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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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