Publishers, festivals to share in $800,000 from Copyright Agency Cultural Fund
The Small Press Network (SPN), literary journals and writers’ festivals are among the organisations that will receive funding from the Copyright Agency in its latest round of grants from its Cultural Fund.
The SPN will receive $60,000 over three years to run its Independent Publishers Conference. The conference, which was first held in November 2012, includes sessions for trade publishers as well as an academic program.
The Sydney Review of Books, a new online journal dedicated to literary criticism, will receive $40,000 over two years to commission long-form reviews of Australian books, and The Big Issue will receive $25,950 to support its annual fiction edition. Other journals to receive funding include the Griffith REVIEW, which will receive $20,000 to support its Novella Award, which will focus on historical fiction this year; Seizure Magazine, which will receive $10,000 to ‘support the mentoring of emerging editors as they undertake their first commission of works’ and to ‘support the commissioning fees for those works’; and Meanjin, which will receive $12,000 to support four mentorships ‘for arts writers and critics to examine the current state of new media art in Australia’.
Festivals and events
Funds have also been allocated to a number of writing conferences and festivals.
The Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) will receive $45,000 to bring authors to its annual conference ‘so that they can be in direct contact with the academics who teach their works’ and the National Library of Australia will receive $20,000 to ‘support the costs of authors participating in a conference on writing in Australia’.
The Australian Historical Association will receive $21,000 to support emerging historians to attend an annual conference and to provide them with mentorships with established writers, and the First Nations Writers Network will receive $10,000 to support a two-day Indigenous writing conference in Brisbane. Macquarie University will receive $5000 to run its Future of Writing Symposium, ‘which will discuss issues faced by journalists and long-form nonfiction authors’, and the NSW Writers’ Centre will receive $4200 to run a one-day symposium ‘to address how writers can promote themselves in the online environment’.
Literary awards
The authors shortlisted for this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award will each receive a $5000 cash prize this year, thanks to $45,000 from the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. The funds will also support reviews of the books longlisted for this year’s award.
The Cultural Fund will also provide $30,000 to the State Library of New South Wales to cover the costs of touring the winning authors from this year’s New South Wales Premier’s Literary and History Awards to regional NSW through the NSW public library network.
The Queensland Literary Awards will receive $25,000 from the Cultural Fund, which will support the David Unaipon Award for an unpublished manuscript by an Indigenous author; the Australian Crime Writers Association will receive $8,500 to support the 2013 Ned Kelly Awards and ‘help the awards to increase their national presence’; and the Finch Memoir Prize will receive $5000 towards prize money for this year’s winner.
Children’s events
A number of children’s arts organisations have also received funding this year.
Pinerolo, the Children’s Book Cottage in the Blue Mountains, NSW, has received $20,000 in funding to offer residencies to children’s book creators. Pinerolo will offer five residencies per year for two years, which will go to children’s book authors and illustrators. Margaret Hamilton will run the residencies. The Brisbane Writers Festival will also receive $5000 to support a residency for a children’s book illustrator.
The Literature Centre, WA, has received funding of $10,000 to hold a conference. The centre held its first conference in October 2012, and will this year hold a conference with a primary school focus to bring together children’s authors, illustrators, teachers and librarians. The conference will be held from 13 to 14 September in Fremantle, WA.
The NSW branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) has received $2500 in funding to run the Maurice Saxby Lecture again in 2013. The lecture, which promotes children’s literature, will be held on 14 May 2013 and will be delivered by senior lecturer at Charles Sturt University Mark Macleod. The Maurice Saxby Lecture was first run in 2012, and acknowledges the contribution made to the CBCA by lecturer, writer and mentor Maurice Saxby AM.
Tags: calculturalfund
Category: Local news
