October was a whirlwind of publicity and our authors have been kept busy indeed. Highlights include Gail Dines (Pornland) and Vandana Shiva (Staying Alive; Soil Not Oil) on Lateline; and Maria Mies (The Village and the World) and Kathleen Barry (Unmaking War Remaking Men) on Late Night Live.

AWARDS

Vandana Shiva arrived in Australia last week with her disarming smile and pocketfuls of inspiration. She received the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize on Thursday 5 November and gave an inspiriting talk the previous night. Making Peace with the Earth was a sold-out event at the Sydney Opera House concert hall where Vandana asserted that current agricultural practices are a form of war against the earth. The Sydney Morning Herald published an edited extract from this event. On Friday she spoke at a packed Wheeler Centre event on the politics of seed-saving and the value of water, not just as a commodity but of cultural and spiritual significance to many. Watch our Facebook and Twitter for an alert to the video footage later this week.

EVENTS

Lara Fergus’ My Sister Chaos will be officially launched by the author of Einstein’s Heroes Robyn Arianrhod at Readings Books & Music, Carlton on Friday 12 November, 6.30pm. Please join us for this free event, readings and a glass of bubbly; details on the Readings website.

The Wheeler Centre is hosting a special event at the Malthouse, tonight, Wednesday 10 November. The Poet’s Voice: Lovers in Trouble is a celebration of the life of the wonderful Dorothy Porter, to coincide with the posthumous collection of Love Poems. Readers include Andrea Goldsmith, Richard Gill, Alicia Sometimes and Craig Sherborne, reading Porter’s poems alongside others in the tradition.

FRANKFURT UPDATE from Susan Hawthorne

Co-director Renate Klein and I attended the trade fair recently, which was as energetic as always. There was considerable interest in Spinifex titles and some of those include:

A rights deal with Fernwood Publishing for a Canadian edition of The Village and the World: My Life, Our Times by Maria Mies. There were expressions of interest from publishing houses in Europe, North America and Asia. My Sister Chaos, Lara Fergus’ novel created a stir among various publishers. We had interest from ten markets in all. Kathleen Barry’s Unmaking War, Remaking Men sparked interest in Europe and a deal with Women Unlimited in India. HELP! I’m Living with a Man Boy by Betty McLellan is a perennial seller at Frankfurt. Already available in sixteen languages we had interest from four more territories this year.

Our next stop, Paris, saw us meeting with the International Alliance of Independent Publishers. A successful project undertaken since our last meeting in Delhi in 2008 is the book by French journalist, Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto. A joint publication by the New Press (USA), Tulika (India) and Spinifex; and supported by the Alliance. We were all delighted to finally meet Marie-Monique Robin whose energy was infectious.

In the last year we have also worked with other Alliance publishers, publishing co-editions of two of Vandana Shiva’s books Soil Not Oil and Staying Alive with Women Unlimited in India. And the release of Fethiye Çetin’s book, My Grandmother: A Memoir came about through meeting the publisher at Metis in Turkey through our Alliance connections.

NEWS WRAP

Watch this affecting interview with Vandana on Lateline; also an informative article The Age/Sydney Morning Herald published recently on her life’s work. Tune in next week, Tuesday 16 November, to Radio National's Life Matters program. Lara Fergus will be talking about her debut novel My Sister Chaos; the following week hear her read from the book on Radio National's The Book Show. She also wrote an eloquent piece for The Wheeler Centre about balancing work and writing. Last week Gail Dines and Melinda Tankard Reist chatted with Phillip Adams on Late Night Live about the pornification and sexualisation of our society (listen online now by clicking on the link).

SPINIFEX BLOG

This month on the Spinifex blog:

Spinifex director Susan Hawthorne entered the Twilight zone with Bella and Edward and was unconvinced by what she saw.

Kathleen Barry shared her thoughts on the rescue of the Chilean miners and global empathy.

The Spinifex blog can be found at the ‘News & Events’ link at the top of our website. You can also find our news page and the newsletter archive there.

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