Books on the topic 'Australian literary journalism'

This chapter examines how novels in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific were reviewed and publicized, and how readerships were informed and created. Literary journalism in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific varies according to the populations, histories, and communications infrastructure of each location. In general, a common pattern has been initial evaluations of work against British and European, then latterly American, models, during which time commentators promoted local writing and sketched national ideals for an independent artistic expression. The chapter considers how book reviews were undertaken, as well as the role of reviewers, in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, academic periodicals, and on radio and television programmes. It shows that all the emergent national literatures in English functioned in an increasingly transnational space in the four nations from the 1950s, first under the rubric of Commonwealth literature and then as postcolonial literatures.

Desert Channels is a book that combines art, science and history to explore the ‘impulse to conserve’ in the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland. The region is the source of Australia’s major inland-flowing desert rivers. Some of Australia’s most interesting new conservation initiatives are in this region, including partnerships between private landholders, non-government conservation organisations that buy and manage land (including Bush Heritage Australia and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy) and community-based natural resource management groups such as Desert Channels Queensland. Conservation biology in this place has a distinguished scientific history, and includes two decades of ecological work by scientific editor Chris Dickman. Chris is one of Australia’s leading terrestrial ecologists and mammalogists. He is an outstanding writer and is passionate about communicating the scientific basis for concern about biodiversity in this region to the broadest possible audience. Libby Robin, historian and award-winning writer, has co-ordinated the writings of the 46 contributors whose voices collectively portray the Desert Channels in all its facets. The emphasis of the book is on partnerships that conserve landscapes and communities together. Short textboxes add local and technical commentary where relevant. Art and science combine with history and local knowledge to richly inform the writing and visual understanding of the country. Conservation here is portrayed in four dimensions: place, landscape, biodiversity and livelihood. These four parts each carry four chapters. The ‘4x4’ structure was conceived by acclaimed artist, Mandy Martin, who has produced suites of artworks over three seasons in this format with commentaries, which make the interludes between parts. Martin’s work offers an aesthetic framework of place, which shapes how we see the region. Desert Channels explores the impulse to protect the varied biodiversity of the region, and its Aboriginal, pastoral and prehistoric heritage, including some of Australia’s most important dinosaur sites. The work of Alice Duncan-Kemp, the region’s most significant literary figure, is highlighted. Even the sounds of the landscape are not forgotten: the book's webpage has an audio interview by Alaskan radio journalist Richard Nelson talking to ecologist Steve Morton at Ocean Bore in the Simpson Desert country. The twitter of zebra finches accompanies the interview. Conservation can be accomplished in various ways and Desert Channels combines many distinguished voices. The impulse to conserve is shared by local landholders, conservation enthusiasts (from the community and from national and international organisations), Indigenous owners, professional biologists, artists and historians.

Indomitable. Matti Kurikka's dreams and failures on three continents Matti Kurikka (1863–1915) is a multi-dimensional and controversial character in Finnish history. He was a playwright, a journalist, a socialist, and a theosophist, as well as a speaker for sexual emancipation and women's rights. Kurikka was born in Ingria, and his activities spanned not only Finland, but also Australia and North America, in both of which he led utopian communities. This biographical study explores Kurikka as a literary and political figure and a builder of utopias, whose life opens fascinating views on the societal and cultural currents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book critically re-evaluates earlier research on Kurikka and highlights forgotten phases of his life by using new source materials found in three continents. The sources include digitized newspapers and periodicals, Kurikka's plays and non-fictional books, oral history, and political cartoons.

This is an interdisciplinary study of the typographical web that underpinned and enabled skilled print trade networks across the anglophone world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a cultural history, the first study of its kind on international Victorian print networks. Morality, mobility, mobilization, and solidarity were central to how compositors and print trade workers defined themselves during this period. These themes are addressed in case studies on roving printers, striking printers, and creative printers, drawing on a range of unique primary and secondary sources covering Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, the United States, and Wales. The case studies explore the cultural values and trade skills transmitted and embedded by such creative compositors, the global print trade union networks that enabled print workers to travel across continents in search of work and experience, the trade actions reliant on mobilization and information sharing across the printing world, and the Victorian working-class literary culture that compositors and printers shared through such means as memoirs, poetry, prose, and trade news contributions to trade journals and other public outlets.