Spinifex has been attending the Frankfurt Book Fair annually since 1992. Each year our appointments with agents and publishers grow and over the years we have built up a significant contact list. Our stand is part of a joint one organised by the Australian Publishers Association, along with many other Australian independents. It’s a great opportunity to talk to friends and colleagues – from home and abroad.
The thing about Frankfurt – or any book fair for that matter – is that it’s a beginning place for discussions. Sometimes it is about closing a conversation that started a year or two beforehand; sometimes opening doors with new agents; sometimes continuing conversations that have gone on over many years, finding the next project that will work with international colleagues.
The work we began in 2009 continued this year. In 2009 discussions started with a new Polish agent, AFK Agency, about Betty McLellan’s Help! I’m Looking for a Man Boy. In 2010 this book has now been sold to a Polish publisher. It is the sixteenth language for this title, as well as a second edition. Other books are now on offer to Polish publishers. We also hope that a new arrangement with a Turkish-language agent, Anatolian Literary Agency will bring new books to our attention and the chance to have Spinifex books translated in Turkey.
It was at Frankfurt in 2007 where we first came across the work of Turkish human rights lawyer, Fethiye Çetin, whose book My Grandmother was published this year to coincide with the Melbourne Writers Festival. The conversation continues.
We have had a long association with Fernwood Publishing in Canada and this continues as they have bought rights to Maria Mies’ memoir, The Village and the World: My Life, Our Times. It is an extraordinary personal history of Maria’s life and her involvement in a host of political movements. She was a forerunner of the women’s movement and her experiences have much to teach about what it is that makes activism successful. Maria has been an inspiration to activists in the anti-globalisation, peace and food security movements, not to mention her incredibly important work in resisting reproductive technologies, free trade rip offs and critiques of colonisation and development. Catching up with Maria and translator Madeline Ferretti-Theilig in Cologne after the Frankfurt Book Fair was, as always, full of passionate conversation.
Translators play an important role in taking Spinifex titles into the world and in September Karin Meissenburg, the translator into German of Cathie Dunsford’s Cowrie novels, was a guest of the University of South Pacific in Fiji, along with Cathie and Susan Hawthorne at a conference on creativity and climate change. Artists, academics and activists from a dozen or so countries attended this stimulating event.
One book that piqued a lot of interest this year is My Sister Chaos, debut fiction from Lara Fergus and it is currently with several publishers. Even poetry generated interest this year, with Susan Hawthorne’s Earth’s Breath being considered by a UK publisher.
While we don’t have world rights on Gail Dines’ Pornland, the interest this book generated suggests that our 2011 book, Big Porn Inc will find international co-publishers – a great way of doing business.
2010 has been an important year for making international contacts and following Frankfurt, we attended a meeting in Paris with the International Alliance of Independent Publishers to discuss a range of activities we hope to generate in the next few years. Publishing is often a long-term game, but it is always worth the wait when important books can be released in several markets simultaneously. That was the case this year with The World According to Monsanto which was published in the USA by The New Press, India by Tulika and Australia by Spinifex Press. In Paris, we met with the author, Marie-Monique Robin and were impressed by her passionate involvement in tackling difficult areas of investigative journalism. This project was supported by the Alliance and we look forward to future projects.
In the middle of 2010 we travelled to the USA where we met with The New Press just prior to the release The World According to Monsanto in Australia. It was in Boston, at the Stop Porn Culture conference, where we met up with Gail Dines and realised that we might have the opportunity of releasing her book, Pornland in Australia. And we look forward to her visit to Australia in 2011 for the Sydney Writers Festival. And in California we caught up with Kathleen Barry, whose book Unmaking War, Remaking Men, a critique of masculinity and war is making waves in both the USA and Australia.
From our meeting in Paris has come another co-publication opportunity, with Indian publisher Women Unlimited for a South Asian edition of Kathleen Barry’s Unmaking War, Remaking Men. We have worked with Women Unlimited over many years, including publishing co-editions of Soil Not Oil and Staying Alive by Vandana Shiva who recently visited Australia to receive the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize. This is an indication of great interest in her work and that of other activists. We first published Ecofeminism, jointly authored by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva in 1993 after visiting Frankfurt Book Fair. It is as if the circle has turned full circle.
Spinifex would like to acknowledge the funding support we received from the Australia Council to travel to Frankfurt and Paris. We are most grateful for that support.
