1. Not much information about the APA internship program was available last year, so I’ve asked this year’s cohort how their terms are turning out. I won’t be interviewing myself, because that’s too strange even for me, but I will be posting an interview with another intern at Oxford University Press instead. If you have any interest in getting started in the publishing industry, check back here over the next five weeks for some nuggets of wisdom. If you have any very interesting and specific questions about the program, feel free to leave them in comments, though I must warn you that these interviews will be done quite a bit earlier than they’ll go up. So, the earlier the better with your rabid industry demands. I think we’ll cover most of the obvious stuff, anyway.

2. The Lifted Brow is seeking submissions for an all-Australian issue until 1 December.

This issue, released in May 2010, will be subtitled The Lifted Brow Poor People Magazine. It will be printed as cheaply as possible, and hopefully sell for about $5. Disposable, rollable, this one will do well on bookshop counters; subscribers at the time will receive two copies, one already gift-wrapped. We want to get this into many grubby hands.

Hopefully half this issue will come from previously unpublished people. They exist: students are lazy about sending their stuff places, and Brow gigs are often full of good people who do art and writing in their spare time but don’t ever even consider publishing. All that said, we’re looking for previous Brow contributors too, and for good work from people who’ve had books out. And we never get enough artwork from anyone. Fiction, nonfiction, poems, incidental art, comics: the only dictum is “Australian and rad”. Or if you will, “Austradia”. The issue will not actually be called “Austradia”.

But hence the widest callout possible. Please do forward it, print it, or otherwise push it. We pay!

What is The Lifted Brow?

The Lifted Brow is a biannual attack journal from Brisbane and Melbourne. We debuted or have published early work by Australians like Michaela McGuire, Kes, Ben Law and Mel Stringer, alongside work by artists like Spiral Stairs, Heidi Julavits, The Lucksmiths, and Neil Gaiman. We publish many types of writing, art, and music, but have probably shown a preference for underground or experimental work.

How to Submit

Email everything to editors@theliftedbrow.com with AUSTRADIA [sic?] in the subject. We are always taking open submissions, but your work will be read with priority when it includes that header. We need to have received your work by 1 December 2009, and will respond by early January, probably earlier.

No more than three pieces per person. No word limits or minimums. Art and comics should look good in B+W and reduce to 210mm h x 142mm w – 300dpi, any format OK. Same with writing, but if you want to impress us, make it a Word doc, 12-point courier, double-spaced, numbered pages. Musicians: there won’t be a CD with this issue. We are not that bothered by the Australian idea: we don’t, say, have special all-Australian funding; if you are pretty much Australian, or even very like Australian, that is fine.

ALRIGHT THEN THANK YOU
The Lifted Brow

3. Things you won’t hear at the place I work: ‘Tell me, how’s my hair? Does my hair look editorial? Or just dirty?’

4. The prize for reading all that is getting to colour in Devendra Banhart’s beard.

FANTASY BOOK ALERT, etc.

The Whisper of Leaves tells the story of Kira, an adventurous, gold-eyed healer whose skills exceed any her people have seen before. One of the Tremen people descended from the peaceful Kasheron, Kira lives in Allogrenia, a beautiful, heavily wooded land divided into portions each associated with one of the Tremen’s eight clans. Kira’s people love the land’s bounty, and carefully keep the ways into it secret. But the Shargh, who are as violent as the Tremen are peaceful, find a way in. Arkendrin, brother of the deceased Shargh chief, seeks Kira, because he believes that she is the subject of an old prophecy that foretells the destruction of his people.

Allogrenia is extensively realised by Nikakis, and her affection for the Victorian landscape where she grew up and continues to work is obviously a big influence on how she created the world in her Kira books. The Tremen people are intimately familiar with the uses of all the plants and herbs that can be found in their lands, and the forest’s animals are often invoked to add colour to Nikakis’s descriptions.

The Whisper of Leaves is the first in a trilogy. Once I’ve read the first volume in a trilogy, I’m usually pretty eager to pick up the rest of the narrative thread in the remaining books. In this case, though, I doubt I will get straight to it. I did like the world and the characters, but the pacing of this book was a little off for me. It moved more slowly than I would have liked, and as a corollary, I rarely sustained the heady suspense that is the usual payoff for reading dramatic fantasy novels. It’s a bit longer than it needs to be, too, though that’s a usual quibble for me with fantasy books. But it’s a nice gentle read, which I appreciated when I was heavily hungover yesterday.

There’s a beautiful illustration depicting Allogrenia on the book’s website, and you can have a peek at sample chapters from each of the Kira books there, too.

Will Freeing Parallel Imports Make Books Cheaper at the Cost of Authors?
An IPRIA and CMCL Seminar
Tuesday 15th September 2009
6pm – 7:30pm (Registration from 5:30pm)
Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Restricting parallel imports of books allows (international) copyright holders to price discriminate between countries. While this has arguably increased the price at which Australian consumers buy books, many claim that profits enjoyed by local publishers enables them to subsidise Australian authors. This panel of experts will consider the relative merits of keeping the existing parallel import restrictions versus opening up the trade in books.

Presenters
Professor Allan Fels AO, Dean, Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG)
Dr Rhonda Smith, Copyright Tribunal of Australia and High Court of New Zealand
Mr Graeme Connelly, Director and CEO, Melbourne University Bookshop
Mr Arlen Duke, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Chair
Professor Sam Ricketson, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

I will be going to this. A bit of a different spin, I suspect, than the predominantly industry-hosted events I’ve attended. More information and register here.

Too excited (image via).

This was my week last week.

About the extent of my understanding of the American health care debate.

UNHHH new dinosaurs found in Australia.

Good review of a drawing of an elephant. (via.)

My new boyfriend and girlfriend. Literary bath-loving threesomes rule OK.

Sweet joy of common sense and humanity, I love having my vote vindicated.

I’ve never in my life been so little disappointed that a song turned out not to be by Nico.

Detailed depictions of Kneen’s sexual experiences are natural ingredients for this memoir: sex is as vital to Kneen as is breathing. Its purchase on her life, however, is sometimes a source of semantic confusion. ‘I’m not a sex addict,’ she says to Katherine, a friend who is trying to pin down the relevant terminology for Kneen’s outlook. But it’s not really the nouns that are important; it’s the verbs. Terms aside, Kneen is constantly sexually wishing and aware. While talking to Katherine in a café, she thinks ‘about how deeply she could reach inside me with those elegant hands’, and registers ‘the feminine beauty’ of a young Asian man who walks past.

Sexuality is something some of us have in more abundance than others, and Kneen’s descriptions of the strange interface between her sexual, ‘ugly’, desiring self and the rest of the world make for confronting reading. As natural as her sexual activities and thoughts are for Kneen, they are not always readily understood by others. Conversations with fellow drama students about sex come to a halt when she discloses how much she enjoys anal sex. And as eagerly as she approaches sexual encounters, she comes to realise that she has never said no, even to partners who take advantage of her body’s willingness in order to please themselves and to humiliate her. But there is a powerfully structured redemptive arc to this story, which sees Kneen finally embrace a new name and new wisdom with which to greet emotional curveballs like these.

I wouldn’t ever attempt to suggest that memoir be or do anything in particular. But in the case of Affection, what is proffered is both beautiful and pedagogical: it organises the author’s own prospect of her self into an illuminating narrative. To make sense of what one has learnt is a responsibility both lovely and grave, and Krissy Kneen has discharged her burden with brave honesty.

I was getting bored of always writing about what I was reading. Kind of like getting sick of looking at yourself in the mirror. So I thought I might ask Wally de Backer, better known to music lovers as Gotye, what he was reading. Before Wally was Gotye, Wally was a librarian. Awesome! Ex-librarians have the best stories. Although I didn’t actually ask him to tell me any. Uhh, okay. Let’s move on.

Our friend Belinda just showed me the copy you lent her of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. Why is this book so compelling for you?
Roth’s prose just feels like it streams straight out of Portnoy’s mind into your ears. I was hooked within the first paragraph and that doesn’t happen very often for me. I’ve never known any Jewish people well, certainly not from New York, so I’m going from my limited experience of a few Woody Allen films and American television, but the character of Alexander Portnoy just seems to so convincingly capture the lifetime’s torment of neurotic worry, crippling expectation, family tension and anti-goyisch prejudice of a young Jewish man from New York. The book is also disarmingly funny, especially Portnoy’s musings on women, sex, love and marriage. It provides little glimpses into the complex, sometimes pathetic and perverse web of thoughts we (or is it just men?) carry around in our heads.

Who are some of your favourite writers/favourite books?
When I discovered Annie Proulx’s writing I devoured her entire collection of novels and short stories. Accordion Crimes was a particular favourite. It might be a fascination with a stereotypically rugged and romantic picture of midwest America, but Proulx’s prose just brings brings characters, places and even smells of places to life for me. There’s a magic to the flow of her sentences that, beyond the incredible descriptive depth, I find mesmerising in their meter and tone alone.

In contrast, I’m a sucker for biographies of musicians and performers. From Joni Mitchell to Prince to Monty Python, I’ve read up on the life stories of most of my favourite entertainers.

What was your favourite thing to read when you were a child?
Flemish comic books. Asterix and Tintin I read in both English and Flemish, but I had a particular love for a series that was never translated into English, called Robbedoes en Kwabbernoot (one of the better-known series in the incredibly broad range of Flemish/French “stripbooks” published in Belgium, where I’m from). I’ve got an almost-complete collection of maybe 60 of the editions in my bookshelf.

What are you currently reading? How do you choose what to read next?
Tim Heath, my bandmate in The Basics, seems to consistently put me on to great books. For instance, he passed me Annie Proulx’s That Old Ace In The Hole, and that’s how I got into her writing. He was reading Philip Roth on a recent tour and I pinched it from him. He always seems to find interesting and varied things to read, and I’m more than happy to piggyback on his discoveries.

At the moment though, I’m reading things I’ve come across myself:
Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. A book that examines how the increasing rate of change in society and our lives that we need to get used to, may not be manageable for much longer. A ’70s look at how we’re struggling to keep up with the world in short.
A Beginner’s Guide To Living by Lia Hills. Not a self-help book, but a fiction for young adults about grieving over loved ones who die. The author was listening to my music while writing the book and graciously sent me a copy — I’m enjoying it, and keeping an eye out for references to my music
A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey. An Australian classic, given to me by my neighbour. An extraordinary life story about an ordinary Australian man. I’ve only just begun reading but it’s engrossing.
Fraffly Strine Everything by Afferbeck Lauder. This was huge in Australia in the ’70s. I found a copy of the classic Let’s Stalk Strine (which comprises the first half of this combined novel), and while I think it’s aged a little underwhelmingly, its written-as-you-hear-it-said take on the dry ocker Aussie accent is at times strange and amusing.
Wired magazine (USA) and Audio Technology magazine (Aus). I’m nerdy enough to have subscriptions to these two mags and I excitedly rip through them (with my eyes) when they arrive in the mail every month.

I heard that you have an extensive collection of Fabio romance novels…
It’s true, and not only do they have remarkable cover photos and inlay fold-out posters, they also feature classic prose like ‘the very sight of this rogue shot a shiver through Natalie that she hastened to control, lest this libertine guess she sensed his raw virility’. But none of the books compare with Fabio’s album. Snippets on my blog.

A man we stayed with in Mauritania told us he was a famous dancer who had travelled beyond his own country all along the West African coast. We nodded and said yeah, that was cool. But he really wanted us to believe him. We did believe him, in our way. But then he said, Play a song. Play me some music.