In 1852 when George Robertson arrived by ship in Melbourne, he opened his trunk and sold books on the wharf because he needed some money for a cab fair.

On this day on a different ship EW Cole also arrived in Melbourne. Edward Cole went on to set up the famous bookstore ‘Coles Book Arcade’. Many people know him by his Coles Funny Picture Books but his arcade was a place in Melbourne where you could buy books, see monkeys, take part in a tea ceremony and if you didn’t have any money you could just sit on the chairs and read. He began his bookselling business in 1865 in the secondhand trade but kept on expanding and moving until he occupied a substantial block in the CBD.

In Sydney 20 or so years later, another George Robertson, also in the book trade, arrived from Scotland. He began work in the Sydney branch of George Robertson & Co – the bookshop set up by the Melbourne based George Robertson. Let’s call him ‘Robertson the Elder’.

An important meeting at George Robertson & Co led to the formation of Angus & Robertson. While working there ‘Robertson the Younger’ met David Mackenzie Angus. And hey presto, they set up Angus & Robertson in Sydney. As we know, this bookseller was until recently one of the longest running bookselling businesses in Australia. Its owner RED Group, a private equity firm, recently entered voluntary administration.

Add William Dymock to this 19th century mix – he was also mentored by Robertson the Elder – and you have a rich history of early Australian booksellers, many of whom also published works by Australian writers.

For the next 6 weeks I’m stepping back in time and will soak up this energetic atmosphere in the early chapter of Australian bookselling. But, I’m just going to focus on just one of these entrepreneurs: EW Cole. He’s hard to ignore actually and it’s enticing to focus just on his life rather than all of the early booksellers. So, I’m making a Hindsight documentary about him. Hindsight is of course ABC Radio National’s excellent social history program. I just have to adjust to the different pace and approach from the daily swirl of life on the Book Show. I’m sure I’ll cope, although I’ll miss the Book Show too.

Links:

Hindsight, ABC Radio National
EW Cole
George Robertson the Elder
George Robertson the Younger
David Mackenzie Angus

Ten years ago, after almost four decades of writing non-fiction, I took the plunge into fiction. As a reader I was increasingly frustrated by the absence of realistic images of older women in Australian popular culture generally and novels in particular. I set out to see if I could write the books I wanted to read. The transition was a terrific challenge; considerably harder than I had imagined but six novels later it’s proved to be well worth the struggle.

I am one of the millions of women around the world who were drawn into the women’s movement of the seventies by the consciousness-raising fiction of feminist writers. I left school in 1960, began work in a typing pool, became a secretary and was married and expecting my first child when I read Sue Kaufman’s Diary of a Mad Housewife and Dorothy Bryant’s Ella Price’s Journal. All my unease and resentment about the treatment of women was captured and expressed in those books. The realities were laid bare through the voices of the characters and the insights into their inner lives which resonated with my own. So when I began my first attempt at fiction almost three decades later I went back to those books and others, including The Women’s Room. I wanted to identify what had made them so powerful, and how I could develop a form of feminist fiction that would speak to women of my age in a new century.

Since the eighties I had been writing about women’s issues in a range of non-fiction genres, now I needed to let go of that and learn new ways to communicate with readers. But the desire to control the reader’s experience – to make her ‘get it’ in exactly the way I wanted – constantly tripped me up. I produced pages of boring rhetoric which would have made any reader throw the book out of the nearest window. I constantly created new characters but didn’t listen to their voices; spreading my own voice over the top, I smothered them. After months of frustration and failure I eventually managed to let go of old habits and embrace the uncertainty of the narrative and the autonomy of the characters. It still haunts me from time to time and my editor reminds me gently that there are better, more subtle and far more effective ways of saying what I want to say. But it happens less often now and I aim to learn more about the art and craft of fiction each time I write a novel.

The joy of fiction lies in the connection between the inner lives of the characters and those of readers. As characters wrestle with contradictory emotions and reach back into the past for solutions for the future, I can speak as though to a friend. Women tell me that recognising themselves in my characters helps to counter their sense of invisibility in a culture that rejects age and celebrates only youth and beauty. That’s what I wanted to do, what I still want to do, and what I’m always trying to do better each time I start a book.

Liz Byrski’s latest novel is called Last Chance Cafe, it’s published by Macmillan.

When Colts Ran by Roger McDonald – listen to Patricia Maunder’s review

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott – listen to Ramona Koval’s interview

Bereft by Chris Womersley – listen to Peter Mares’ interview

Franz Lenz photo from Wikipedia

By David Herlihy, author of The Lost Cyclist and Bicycle: The History

My new book, The Lost Cyclist, germinated over a dozen years ago. A journalist approached me to find out what I knew about Frank Lenz, an American cyclist who disappeared in Turkey in 1894 while trying to complete a round-the-world journey on a new-fangled “safety” bicycle with inflatable tires. I was already known as a bicycle historian, thanks to my research on the early development of the bicycle. The inquirer, John Kelly, explained that he was writing a book about this forgotten pioneer while on leave from the Washington Post.

At that time, I didn’t have much to offer Kelly, but I made a point of gathering information on Lenz whenever I came across his name while reading late 19th century cycling literature. I also connected with a young man near Boston who had a scrapbook of unpublished photographs taken by Lenz during his world tour. After I completed my first book, Bicycle: The History, in 2004, I decided to write a book on Lenz myself, the Kelly book having never materialized.

I already had copies of Lenz’s articles from Outing magazine, his sponsor, but I wanted to supplement those with newspaper reports that might add details or revealing interviews. I found that newspapers frequently reported on Lenz’s visits. So I traced his first two summer high-wheel tours with Petticord, from Pittsburgh to St. Louis in 1890 and to New Orleans in 1891, and then the start of his world tour across North America in 1892. I used digital databases, and I emailed librarians with specific research requests. I also traveled to the key state libraries where I mined newspapers on microfilm. I did the same to track Allen & Sachtleben’s ride across the US, and employed similar tactics to document both parties’ foreign travels (William Sachtleben would eventually travel to Turkey in search of the lost Lenz).

Thanks to Kelly, I knew that the State Department had files on the Lenz case, but I had no idea how extensive they were. Altogether I spent several weeks at our National Archives II in College Park, Maryland, photocopying hundreds of pages. I also spent some time in Pittsburgh digging up information on Lenz’s early years.

Using Internet-based tools, I traced several people with papers of interest, including Ann Irvine, the granddaughter of the missionary in Turkey who hosted Sachtleben in 1895, and John Lenz, a great-grandson of one of Lenz’s step-uncles. Lenz had a number of unpublished photographs taken by Frank Lenz, mostly from his high-wheeling days.

Shortly after I visited John at his home in Florida, he informed me that another journalist had contacted him with a view toward writing a book on Lenz. This was of course a surprise to me, given that no one had ever written a book on Lenz. I would eventually meet that individual, Geoff Koss, who revealed to me that he had gotten the idea from my first book, after seeing a photo of Lenz in China. Surprisingly, I would come across a few more people who had similar intentions.

I finally sealed my book deal in late 2007. Although my manuscript was due in a year, it would take me two.  That second year enabled me to visit Istanbul. My researcher there, Candan Badem, found some real gems in the Ottoman Archives, including the transcript of a meeting between the American minister and the Sultan himself to discuss the Lenz case. I was also able to consult a number of Sachtleben papers stored in Los Angeles.

Of course, even though my book is now out, I’m still eager to find new elements. I recently connected with a relative of Sachtleben  who had a few interesting things to show me. Maybe someday I’ll find a chest full of letters from Lenz to his mother. Then it will be time for second edition.

Video of David Herlihy talking about Frank Lenz.

I’m going to be completely honest and say that when I started writing in the genre known to most as ‘chick lit’ I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. The novel Not Meeting Mr Right (Random House 2007) was as much about purging myself of 15 years of bad dates as it was about writing urban Aboriginal women into Australian fiction. With that first book I was quickly boxed into the ‘Koori chick lit’ genre, or as my friends call it ‘chock-lit’, and the next three books then fell into that category as well.

Since that first novel, I have been strategically conscious of the audience I am writing for. I want to connect with Australian women readers of commercial fiction (which is what I prefer to call it), particularly those who have never engaged with Aboriginal women, arts, culture or society generally. I want them to connect through stories about relationships and the things we have in common as women, our shared human emotions of love, heartache, fear of rejection and so on. And I want to demonstrate the strength of women’s friendships across cultures.

It is through these stories of relationships with our friends and at times the elusive ‘One’ that I can then weave the things that are equally important to me: Aboriginal arts, culture, politics, identity and community issues. In this way, the complexities of my every day life, and the lives of all the Aboriginal women I know – who are lawyers, policy makers, arts practitioners, community workers and so forth – can also be showcased on the page. In this way, I am consciously writing capable, strong, educated, articulate and often gorgeous Aboriginal women onto the Australian literary radar.

Paris Dreaming is my latest effort, with Libby Cutmore, a young Gamilaroi woman originally from Moree, who finds herself in Canberra managing educational projects at the National Aboriginal Gallery, situated in the Old Parliament House. She’s efficient, cost effective and organised. She writes lots of lists! And she’s ready to take on the international arena with her ‘Pitch for Paris’ and a stint at the Musee du Quai Branlee.

Her journey also takes in the local politics of France as it happened while I was researching there, including legislation banning the burqa and the Roma crackdown which led to the deportation of Romanian refugees.

Because of the political, cultural and social issues prominent in my work, I’m annoyed at the elitist hierarchy that exists in this country, placing ‘chick lit’ at the bottom of the ladder. A ladder that suggests my books are lesser than someone else’s. I am writing about the lives of Aboriginal women in Australia today. Are we of lesser value also?

Not many library users know that some public libraries offer ebooks for loan but as the number of ebook titles grows so too will the numbers on the virtual bookshelves in libraries. But the future for lending ebooks isn’t being taken for granted by libraries.

What’s becoming clear is that the rights of libraries to lend ebooks is different from their rights to lend hardcopies. Sue Hutley is the Executive Director of the Australian Library and Information Association and on the Book Show she said libraries recognise that the ebook model for publishers is not the same as their hardcopy siblings but she wants publishers to embrace public libraries as supporters of publishers rather than being in competition with them.

What’s happened is that the parent branch of Harper Collins in the USA has changed the terms of ebooks library loans through Overdrive, a provider of ebooks to public libraries. This was reported in the New York Times and also in The Guardian. Harper Collins has changed the arrangement by restricting the availability of their ebook titles to libraries for one year or 26 loans. This means the library can buy a hardcopy book and circulate it as often as it’s requested, replacing it when needed but with ebooks, Harper Collins is determining when libraries need to purchase a new copy, now after 26 loans.

Roberta Stevens, President of the American Libraries Association says this restriction has implications for library budgets and also for their ability to provide access to all.

A flyer on the Australian Publishers’ Association (APA) website said a ripple ran through the book world when Harper Collins US made this announcement. 

The new Harper Collins US arrangement doesn’t affect Australia yet. Christine Mackenzie from Yarra Plenty Regional Library says the Harper Collins branch here doesn’t even make their ebook titles available to libraries for loan.

What are the implications? On 6 April 2011, the APA is holding a forum on the topic of ebooks in libraries. The title for the session is Ebooks for libraries: is it worth the risk for publishers? It’s part of their ‘International Digital Chat Series’ and the guest will be London based Stephanie Duncan, Digital Media Director, Bloomsbury Publishing. The topics for discussion are:

-Risks and opportunities for publishers in making ebooks available to libraries
-Business models for ebook library supply to public, school and academic libraries
-Local and international ebook library vendors
-Implications of lending features offered by ebook retailers such as Kindle

All of this shows that there’s no certainty at the moment for publishers or libraries. The Book Show will follow these developments.

Chris Morphew

You don’t have to work very long as a writer to learn that there are certain questions readers never seem to get tired of asking:

What made you want to become a writer?

Where do you get your ideas?

When is your book going to get turned into a movie?

(I’m always slightly suspicious of that last one.)

Another question I’m asked fairly regularly – presumably because of my involvement with the Zac Power series – is Why did you decide to write for reluctant readers? It’s a great question, and with enough time I’m sure I could come up with a very articulate response (something that made me sound good and noble), but here’s the honest answer:

I didn’t.

I’ve never made any conscious decision to create a career out of writing for reluctant readers. It all happened more or less by accident.

Zac Power, my first writing gig, was a series custom-designed with reluctant readers in mind, but none of that was my doing. I jumped onboard at book #13, long after the target audience had been established. Zac has done great things for reluctant readers, and I’m incredibly grateful to have been a part of that, but all I was doing was working to the existing template.

And if anything, when I started working on my current series, The Phoenix Files, I thought I was breaking away from the constraints of a “reluctant reader” audience. I moved from short, simple, self-contained stories with one or two leads to a heavily serialised six-book arc with a cast of dozens.  I introduced drawn-out mysteries and abstract science fiction concepts. I wrote entire chapters featuring almost nothing but dialogue. In short, I was writing the kind of series that reluctant readers are not supposed to be interested in.

But, apparently, no one told that to them.

As it turns out, my great departure from reluctant readers was no such thing, and I am constantly amazed by the number of humbling, heart-warming emails I receive from parents of formerly-reluctant readers – or even from the children themselves – telling me how The Phoenix Files has helped to change their mind about books.

And, understand me here, I don’t think this reaction is due to any special brilliance in my writing. My stories just happened to be the ones that resonated with this particular group of readers.

But it does make me wonder if we have a tendency to get a bit too fixated on uncovering a magic formula for “curing” reluctant readers when, at least for some of them, the solution may simply be a case of finding the right book for the right child.

At this point, I’m drawing a distinction between reluctant readers and struggling readers (although I’m aware that the two often go hand-in-hand). If the problem is literacy, then let’s do everything we can to remove that obstacle. But if the problem is reluctance, then maybe the best thing that I as an author can do is to just keep on writing the most engaging stories I can.

Reluctant readers are not some peculiar alien species with an entirely different way of interacting with texts. If they’re going to connect with a story, they’ll do it for the same reasons that all of us do: characters we can fall in love with, plotlines that make us think and dream and gasp and wonder, expressions of hope and redemption that shine light out into the darkness of the world.

If we can open the door to that, then who knows what might happen next?

Chris Morphew is a guest of the Children’s Book Festival at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre, Sunday 3 April 2011.

This book has just been longlisted for this year’s Miles Franklin award. It’s the second time Kim Scott has been in the running. His book Benang won in 2000, sharing the prize with Thea Astley’s Drylands.

The 2011 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist is:

How did the papers report the prize this year?

The Australian’s Stephen Romei did a breakdown of the number of books each author has published. Jon Bauer and Kirsten Tranter are first timers, there are 3 second time novelists, Stephen Orr is a third time novelist and then there are Miles Franklin veterans Roger McDonald and Kim Scott.

The Age printed three paragraphs on the longlist in the paper, honing in on debut novelist Jon Bauer’s happiness about becoming a citizen and the Herald Sun profiles the other debut novelist Kirsten Tranter. Guardian Messenger tells us that Adelaide publisher Wakefield’s book is on the list, Stephen Orr’s Times Long Ruin. The West Australian celebrates Kim Scott’s listing.

Jason Steeger is on the lookout for controversy in the SMH given the criticism of the award by one of last year’s shortlisted writers, Steeger writes: Alex Miller used the announcement of the shortlist in which he featured as an opportunity to criticise Kevin Rudd’s decision to set up the PM’s literary awards while cutting literary funding elsewhere. He also lamented that Rudd hadn’t considered buttressing the Miles in its position as Australia’s most significant literary prize. It seems griping works. This year the prize money has been boosted from $42 000 to $50 000 and the prize will be announced for the first time in Melbourne.

All in all there was a smattering of news space given to the announcement of the longlist. Let’s see if this changes for the shortlist announcement on April 19, followed by the award dinner on 22 June.

Pablo Neruda photo from Wikipedia

When I conducted a quick straw poll around the ABC Radio National office, not one person agreed on the greatest poet who ever lived.  I had expected a range but didn’t realise we were such a motley bunch.

One colleague agreed with the survey conducted by English Professor Dean Rader, published in the New York Times – that Pablo Neruda was the best. 

Others up and down the corridor named Rumi, Keats, WB Yeats, Sylvia Plath, TS Eliot, Lewis Carroll (I know it’s daggy, the senior RN Broadcaster blurted, but I love Jabberwocky and immediately there was a chorus of ‘Twas Brillig and the slithy tove Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe…. “)  Another named John Lennon as an enduring influence in their lives.

One arts broadcaster named not just the poet, but the poem;   Jorge Luis Borge’s , The Palace. Another high profile presenter was closer to home with Australian bush bard David Campbell.   ‘He visited me at my school, it was beautiful ,’ she said.  For your interest, here are some of his poems.

Dean Rader who initially conducted the US survey for the San Francisco Chronicle experienced similar disparate views and was bemused by the response.

I suspect poetry speaks for the readers’ own times, the child in the classroom entranced by a nonsense poem, the adolescent hurting with unrequited love, the young activist looking for a slogan, reading a tattered volume on long journeys in foreign lands, or the quiet contemplative holiday perhaps in the bush or by the sea.   Maybe the poet becomes an expression of the reader’s significant moments; of times of deep clarity or deep despair. Certainly my own reading of favourites like WB Yeats, the war poets, Charles Simic was a time of young adult reflection.  It was also very private and probably extremely self indulgent, but hey, what other time in your life can you be so self reflexive?  Now, when I occasionally dip into poetry, it does recall those intense times.  Reading new great poets and new poetry is a different world, of discovery and analysis, but the poets we grew up with, are about memory, of feelings. So perhaps that is why they are the greatest to us.  I didn’t dig deeper and ask why my colleague’s had their preferences but I suspect they reflect a certain period in their lives. 

And I suspect we all recognise those significant moments because we all have them.  Poetry can speak to the reader’s experience which is – in the end universal.

When Pablo Neruda received his Nobel Prize for literature in 1971 his acceptance speech included his recipe for writing a poem.

“….I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained – man and his shadow, man and his conduct, man and his poetry – by an ever-wider sense of community, by an effort which will forever bring together the reality and the dreams in us because it is precisely in this way that poetry unites and mingles them…………From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny…”

Who is your greatest poet?  Who is the poet that can somehow reach into those saddest places and convey ‘our sorrowful song’.

By Anita Barraud, producer The Book Show ABC Radio National

Left to right: Rebecca Starford, Sophie Cunningham, Monica Dux, Louise Swinn

On the hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day, over 100 bookish types packed among the shelves of Readings Carlton in Melbourne to hear a panel of Australian literary women talk about the very timely hot topic of the moment – the oft-suspected, recently proven underrepresentation of women in the world of books and writing.

The session was chaired by Rebecca Starford, editor of Kill Your Darlings. Participants were Sophie Cunningham, novelist, former publisher, commentator and recent editor of Meanjin; Louise Swinn, editorial director of Sleepers Publishing and a writer and reviewer; and Monica Dux, The Age opinion writer, author of The Great Feminist Denial.

The conversation began with a sobering reflection on those statistics recently released by VIDA (a relatively new US organisation for women and the arts), which revealed a stark gender bias in the pages of a wide range of literary institutions, including The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review and Granta.

Rebecca Starford presented the findings of her own mini-survey of the current situation in Australia, based on the records of trade magazine Bookseller & Publisher’s weekly supplement, Media Extra, over the first two months of 2011:

In The Age, 133 books were reviewed: 90 authored by men, 43 (or 33%) by women. Of the reviewers of those books, 72 were men, 61 by women.

In The Australian, 88 books were reviewed: 61 authored by men, 27 (or 30%) by women. Of the reviewers, 55 were men, 33 were women

Things were still skewed, but less so, at Australian Book Review. In 2010, 356 books were reviewed: 210 authored by men, 146 (41%) by women. The numbers of reviewers was fairly even. Interestingly, though, only 27% of the books by men were reviewed by women.

At Australian Literary Review, the stats were more damning. From October 2010 to February 2011, 51 books were reviewed: 41 by men; 10 (less than 20%) by women. Of the reviewers, 36 were men; 15 (29%) were women.

One of the explanations commonly offered for this disparity is that men are more willing to put themselves forward than women. Talking to The Book Show recently, (in a segment that was often cited during the night’s discussion), the literary editors of The Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald all mentioned that they receive far more pitches from men than women.

Sleepers Publishing’s Louise Swinn reported that she receives more book-length submissions from men, though the submissions for the annual Sleepers Almanac anthologies of short stories are evenly split between men and women.

Sophie Cunningham, talking about her recent role as editor of Meanjin, had a particularly interesting story to tell – gender ratios “varied wildly” depending on the genre of the submission. “I had to work very hard to make sure that women were properly represented in non-fiction,” she said. “Because in terms of essays received, I was getting a lot more essays by men, if you keep memoir out of it. The pieces by women did tend to be a lot more personal and written out of their own experience.” Looking back on her time at Meanjin, Sophie said that while 52% of the essays overall were by women, 75% of the memoir pieces she published were written by women. (In that time, incidentally, 53% of the fiction and 35% of the poetry was by women.) Speaking specifically about Meanjin’s CAL-sponsored series of essays on cultural institutions, Sophie said it was difficult to find women to write these pieces. “Women often said, I’m not an expert, I don’t know that I’ve got the time, and were generally a lot more diffident about tackling those subjects where they were expected to be fairly aggressive in their analysis.”

Louise backed up Sophie’s point with a quote from Alizah Salario’s piece, ‘Twenty-Three Short Thoughts About Women and Criticism’ on Bookslut: “At her most basic, a good critic must possess a certain amount of chutzpah in order to believe other people will read – and care about – what she has to say. Call them audacious or simply arrogant, critics must have the confidence to write with conviction. They must demonstrate to readers why, of an infinite number of interpretations, theirs speaks a truth (but perhaps not the truth).”

Louise reflected, “I think maybe we’re not always encouraged to think that our experience can be the experience.”

Monica Dux said that though the VIDA statistics are “appalling”, she’s “not actually that surprised”, having spent the last couple of years of her life looking at women’s representation and writing about women. “It’s a reflection of society. I think we have this idea that writing is somehow more transcendent, and that it must be more noble.” She cited the current debate about the underrepresentation on women on boards as an example of where this situation is reflected in the wider world.

“I think that women actually need to push themselves out of their comfort zone, otherwise we’re stuck in this loop,” said Sophie. “I got really frustrated with the number of women who said, I’m not an expert. I tell you what, the men I was ringing up asking to write on subjects weren’t saying, I’m not an expert.” She said that she often tended to use good female non-fiction writers “several times over”, citing Sian Prior and Lorin Clarke as two of her go-to writers. She believes this likely results in her figures being “fairly skewed, in the way I think The New Yorker figures are … I think if you took Susan Orlean out of the mix at The New Yorker, you’d end up with about two [non-fiction women writers].”

Monica agreed with Sophie’s idea about the need for women to push beyond their comfort zones, drawing on her own experience as an opinion writer. “Those first few experiences of sending an unsolicited opinion piece were excruciating. Writing is, by its nature, very much about confidence.” She said she started writing “almost by accident”, as a result of some pro-active female editors who encouraged her. “There are people out there who are looking to publish women. You just need to be persistent and push.”

Louise reflected that, as a writer, she needs to “not take rejection so hard and just keep going”. A seemingly confident and polished public speaker, Louise admitted to being “incredibly nervous” about public speaking, and having done “lots and lots” of public speaking courses, as well as acting and singing classes, in order to feel comfortable performing in public. “At Sleepers, when we’re asking people to do events, we always have to ask two women for every one man,” she said. “You’ve got to start saying yes. And start pitching.”

Sophie said, “The men I’ve worked with – writers like James Bradley, a really fine writer and reviewer – would constantly pitch stuff at me.” She emphasised the effort she consciously put in to achieve gender balance at Meanjin and the importance of “as an editor, as a publisher, taking affirmative action really seriously. Doing the statistics.”

Louise held up a flyer she’d happened upon, for a series of seminars, running over the next few months, on VCE English texts. Of 15 set texts discussed, only two of these were by women. “These are kids going through school and this is what they’re reading,” she said. “And then we tell the girls that their voices are just as worthwhile.”

“I think it’s getting worse,” observed Sophie, pointing to the recent Triple J Hottest 100 furore as an example of the culture we currently inhabit. (For the first time ever, no female solo singers were featured in this list, put together from public votes.) And of course the panel all recalled the infamous “sausage-fest” all-male Miles Franklin shortlist of 2009.

I’ve done my own quick calculations (since the event) on how women have fared in general with the nation’s leading literary prize. Over the course of the Miles Franklin Award – which has run since 1957 – a woman has won 13 times. Three times this was Thea Astley; twice she shared the award (in 2000, with Kim Scott; and in 1963, with George Turner). The Miles has been awarded 50 times in all. Over the past decade (since 2001), two women have won, from the pool of 10 awards.

There’s much more to be discussed around this issue – and hopefully there will be further events and more public discussions. (For instance, on International Women’s Day, Melbourne’s The Wheeler Centre ran a terrific piece by novelist Kirsten Tranter on this very issue.) Perhaps, one year on, we should take another look at the statistics of women in print and see if anything has changed?

Jo Case is associate editor of Kill Your Darlings and books editor of The Big Issue.

(The Book Show also did the sums on the gender split of guests on the show, read the breakdown here)