CONGRATULATIONS



Susan Hawthorne's Cow has been shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards! Here is an excerpt of the Judges' comments. "A courageous and daring collection that playfully and intelligently uses the symbol of the cow to reimagine a history of modern women". And, "Cow with its obvious interest in and inspiration from India, manages to write about India and the sacred in a fresh, fun and surprising way that goes beyond the regular, often saccharine, retelling of myth... Susan Hawthorne's writing is inventive, has a fine use of allusions and metaphor and she challenges both the reader and herself to make old stories and commonplace creatures mean something new."

This is the second nomination Cow has received this year, having also been a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry in the US. A big congratulations to Susan!

EVENTS
Francesca Rendle-Short author of Bite Your Tongue will be part of the conversation at the NonfictionNow Conference.
When: Friday 23rd November, 7.30pm
Where: Storey Hall, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne

Judy Horacek author of Life on the Edge (along with 3 other authors) is speaking on 'A Night at the Zoo' at the Wheeler Centre.
When: Wednesday 21st November
Where: Wheeler Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale St, City

Patricia Sykes author of The Abbotsford Mysteries will be reading at The Red Wheelbarrow.
When: Friday 14th December, 8pm
Where: 105 Lygon Street, East Brunswick

NEWS


The launch of Making Peace with the Earth by Vandana Shiva was held in the lovely grounds of CERES environmental park. It was a beautiful day and the launch began with Kavisha's rich vocals drifting over CERES. We then heard from the inspiring Fran Murrell from MADGE and Bob Phelps from Gene Ethics. After the drawing of the raffle, Kavisha lead us all in a song, which summed up the message of Vandana's work.



We are very excited to announce that Merlinda Bobis's Fish-Hair Woman was launched last week in the Philippines. A Philippine Australian writer, Bobis has a strong overseas following for both her books and her plays, which have been performed for the stage in Australia, the Philippines, Spain, USA, France, China, Thailand and the Slovac Republic.

Dr Megan Tyler wrote an opinion piece for ABC's "The Drum" this week, titled 'Trolling, misogyny and porn: the perils of being a woman online' which was a fascinating examination of the many ways that online trolling and pornography go hand-in-hand. As Tyler points out: Superimposing a woman's head on a pornographic image is a common form of cyber-intimidation aimed at women... Dr Meagan Tyler was a contributing writer to Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry, which was Highly Commended in the 2012 Australian Educational Publishing Awards.

Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times titled 'A Habit That Can Destroy Lives.' Gail Dines was writing with Robert Jensen, a fellow founding member of Stop Porn Culture. In the piece, Dines and Jensen explore the question: "What happens when a culture is saturated with explicit images eroticizing male domination and female subordination?"

The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women's Rights edited by Minkey Worden continues to provoke discussion, check out this review in The Newtown Review of Books.

FREE FREIGHT OVER THE CHRISTMAS PERIOD


Whether you're looking to buy something for friends, family or yourself, a book is a gift from the heart. Behind the scenes a great deal of care and passion goes into choosing the books that we eventually publish. Our books have focused on and emerged from, Palestine, Africa, the Middle East, India, the Philippines, the UK and Australia. From the political to the humourous, from the heartbreaking to the fantastical, whatever your taste our 2012 list has something for everyone. Fish-Hair Woman by Merlinda Bobis, The Lace Makers of Narsapur by Maria Mies, The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women's Rights edited by Minkey Worden, Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home edited by Penny Johnson and Raja Shehadeh, A Bit of Difference by Sefi Atta, Making Peace with the Earth by Vandana Shiva and The Fabulous Feminist by Suniti Namjoshi.

BLOGS
Spinifex intern Jacalyn posted a moving piece about the shooting of Malala Yousufzai and the way violence is regularly used to silence women and girls. 'Sadly, the shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai was no isolated event'.

Danielle Binks wrote a blog about the disturbing misogynistic mayhem going on at the Catholic Church-owned St John's College, in her piece 'Sexism at St. John's'. Her blog is centred around Harvard Law School lecturer, Diane L. Rosenfeld's disturbing chapter in Big Porn Inc: 'Who are you calling a 'Ho'?: Challenging the Porn Culture on Campus' which highlighted many eerily similar connections and problems of sexism between American college campuses and the headline-antics of St. John's.

Following from her successful talk at the inaugural Independent Publishers Conference organised by the Small Press Network, Susan Hawthorne wrote a blog on 'Bibliodiversity: The power of the local in the global'. When '50 Shades' is dominating global bookshelves, Susan reminds us why the global publishing industry tends "towards standardisation, homogenisation, taming of creativity, dislocation and exoticisation, as well as the privatisation of the writer. When the latter happens, s/he becomes a marketable global commodity, a product stripped of self."

After Julia Gillard announced a Royal Commission to investigate decades of child abuse in churches, schools and foster homes, she commented that "these are insidious acts to which no child should be subject." This got Danielle Binks thinking about Diane Bell's 2005 novel Evil, which explored the conspiracy of "sex, silence and sin". Danielle blogged chilling excerpts from Bell's novel in the piece, 'Evil and a Royal Commission to Investigate'.

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