“For many years, from afar, I have enjoyed watching the Jaipur Literature Festival grow and expand to become representative of the many parts of Indian culture and its intersection with the English-speaking world. Now I will get to experience the festival, and better than that, to also participate in Jaipur BookMark, the perfect complement to a literary festival,” says Meredith Curnow, the Knopf Vintage publisher at Random House Australia.
Curnow who has published noted authors including Don Watson, Gail Jones, Frank Moorhouse, Deborah Forster, David Malouf, Tom Keneally, Nick Earls, and Kate Forsyth says that she is excited and delighted to be part of the delegation. Prior to joining Random House, Australia, Curnow was the director of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, from its re-launch as a freestanding event in 1998 till 2002 when it featured over 200 writers and performers from across Australia and around world.
Curnow chairs the Australian Publisher Association’s Council Committee for the ‘Residential Editorial Programme’ and is on the editorial advisory board of the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. She thinks that it is a wonderful idea to bring publishers together – for formal and informal meetings and gatherings – alongside the books and writers they publish, to look to the future and discuss innovations and trends. “I expect to leave motivated and inspired by all I have seen and heard, and with a long list of Indian writers to read,” she says.
Australians may be tough or difficult to handle on the cricket field, but in everyday life are friendly and easy to get on with. One can look forward to meeting, interacting and doing business with the big Australian delegation at the Jaipur Literature Festival and the BookMark B2B alongside at the Narain Vilas palace. Henry Rosenbloom – a noted scribe and independent publisher and Shona Martyn, an award winning journalist who has been the publishing director of HarperCollins Australia and New Zealand for 15 years will also take part in at the Jaipur BookMark event. In her role at HarperCollins, Martyn oversees all adult fiction and non-fiction publishing including the ABC Books imprint and the Harper Collins New Zealand publishing operation.
Author of Politics and the Media (1976), Rosenbloom has been a book printer, freelance journalist, book reviewer, and occasional newspaper op-ed and feature writer. In 2010 he was presented with a George Robertson Award for service to the publishing industry. He says, “I am looking forward to witnessing the Jaipur Literature Festival, which I’ve heard many good things about from international publishing colleagues, and to taking part in the BookMark, where I’ll be in a panel discussion on the funding challenges facing trade publishing.” His venture, Scribe Publications, has been the Australian Small Publisher of the Year for 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2011.
Other participants at JBM are Terri-ann White the director of UWA Publishing in Perth, Western Australia and Kate McCormack who has worked with Tara Books in India and is now the rights manager at Penguin Australia. Ivor Indyk is the founder of the award-winning independent literary publisher, Giramondo Publishing, and Whitlam professor in the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney.
Indyk represents four authors who he hopes will be of interest to Indian publishers. Among them are the aborigine novelist, Alexis Wright, a delegate at the Jaipur Literature Festival whose novel Carpentaria is to be published by Navayana and the Indian-Australian writers – Christopher Raja, Michelle Cahill and Suneeta Peres da Costa. Indyk is also keen to learn about poetry publishing in India, and Indian writers working in languages other than English for possible publication in translation in Australia.
