Young and Emerging writers and the Australian Literary Field (original) (raw)

Creative Writing, Cultural Capital and the Labour Market Australian Humanities Review #53 (2012

Over the last decade several Australian broadsheet newspapers have run numerous articles on the state of literary publishing, providing a rare opportunity for academic debate to enter the public arena. According to the reported commentary of novelists, publishers and academics, it would seem the literary field is caught between two contradictory currents: although the economic viability of Australian literary titles appears under pressure, there is booming demand for university courses in creative writing. This casual linkage has enabled a range of speculations on the possibly 'perverse' market relations between writing programs and the publishing industry. Has consumer demand for Australian literary authors shifted from the bookshop to the arts faculty? A recent quip by Frank Moorhouse would suggest so: 'Now the joke goes that when someone says they're a writer, the next question is, " where do you teach? " ' (10). While concerns about the impact of globalisation on Australian literary publishing are often reported with a significant amount of hyperbole, they have also received some evidence-based support. In his analysis of the publishing trends of large publishing houses, Mark Davis has suggested that a 'literary paradigm of Australian publishing' has been in decline since around 2000; and this account has received qualified support from David Carter's analysis of a more comprehensive dataset of literary fiction titles published between 1990 and 2006 (although for a longer historical perspective, see Bode). While it may be simply too early to know how significant these developments are, the perception of a decline has nevertheless rendered the current popularity of creative writing courses conspicuous, with commentators engaged in some heady accusations and imaginative defences. Some authors have accused creative writing courses of flooding the desks of publishers with bad manuscripts, while journalists and some academics have claimed that writing programs are little more than an 'academic racket' in student fees and a clandestine form of state subsidy for literary writers (e.g. Neill; Pryor; King). It has also been claimed, from both celebratory and despondent perspectives, that creative writing is gradually displacing literary studies as students are now more interested in the production rather than history or interpretation of writing (Muecke). For some creative writing lecturers it has been a short step from here to the promotion of new economy rhetoric on the rise of a 'creative class' and the benefits of creativity for an innovation economy (Dale). At stake in these debates are two sets of concerns. The first is signaled by the figure of 'student demand'. In the post-Dawkins era, discussions about student demand operate less as neutral indicators of the shifting

Small Publishers and the Emerging Network of Australian Literary Prosumption

This article examines recent debates around the decline of Australian literary production, focusing on the various methods used by Mark Davis, David Carter and Katherine Bode to quantify literary publishing activity. Following this analysis, the article surveys Australian literary production in 2012 in order to make four key claims: 1) a fundamental shift has occurred in the mediation of literary production, which is now principally undertaken by small and independent publishers; 2) this shift in mediation has profoundly affected the audience for most literary works, which now circulate amongst a smaller readership who have some stake in the production of literature as authors or mediators; 3) this contemporary form of literary ‘prosumption’ resembles the mode of literary production of the avant-garde as described by Pierre Bourdieu; 4) while this network of prosumption may appear insular, the complex social position of ‘authorship’, as noted by Bernard Lahire, means that literary culture brings together a network of agents who might otherwise remain unconnected. http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2016/03/18/small-publishers-and-the-emerging-network-of-australian-literary-prosumption/

The Adventures of an Artful Dodger: On Writers and Writing in Contemporary Australia

The paper explores a range of issues tackled by Michael Wilding in his latest novel National Treasure (2007). Following Academia Nuts (2002), which exposes the follies of the Australian academic establishment, National Treasure focuses on the Australian literary world, revealing it to be not much different from the world of show business, where a Darwinian battle for survival rages.

The Literary as a Cultural Industry

The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries, eds. Kate Oakley and Justin O'Connor

Book publishing is often absent from or treated cursorily in cultural industries research. The little research that does consider publishing does not discuss what characterizes and informs the production, circulation and reception of particularly literary titles. At first glance we might explain this lacuna as a matter of disciplines. Cultural industries researchers are mainly working in sociology and in cultural and media studies, whereas those concerned with the specificity of literature work in English faculties. Our chapter questions this divide.

The Word's the Thing: Literature & Publishing - canaries in the cage of the creative economy

This is a discussion of the challenges of understanding and intervening at the interface of arts, culture and creative industry. The paper discusses some of learning points that emerged through the work of the author on the Creative Scotland 2015 review of literature & publishing. A need for more ambitious strategic partnerships between enterprise and cultural agencies, and the research capacity of universities is identified. The case for supporting a lively and outward looking literature scene that reaches across the whole of the country is not diminished by global trends in publishing and digital technology. The paper is published at http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/article/words-thing

Sociology of Literature and Publishing in the Early 21st Century: Away From the Centre

Cultural Sociology, 2015

Literature is the art form of the nation-state. The written word was at the peak of its influence from the Enlightenment until late in the 20th century. National literatures became central to the development of national identities and the formation of national art worlds. Moreover, they were important vehicles for the exchange of ideas. However, the central position of the nation-state has dwindled due to the centrifugal effects of globalization and regionalization. Simultaneously, literature has given way to other, mainly visual and digital, cultural forms. In the process, it has lost much of its political clout. Literature seems to pose little or no threat to those groups it may previously have worried, and is of little consequence to elites in the 21st century. Instead, it has become an object of cultural consumption, for dwindling and aging publics.