Scribe Publications: New Releases, Latest Scribe News and Henry's Blog

Tony Kevin takes the prize!

2008-07-23T16:39:08Z

Scribe would like to congratulate Scribe author Tony Kevin.

The winner of the $5000 Eureka Street/Reader's Feast Award for Social Justice/Human Rights writing was Tony Kevin for his essay The Day the Boat Sank. The essay takes Australian artist Kate Durham's cycle of SIEV-X (Suspected Illegal Entry vessel ‘unknown') paintings as inspiration and revisits the sinking explored in his book A Certain Maritime Incident and its politicised aftermath. Highly commended were writers Maddy Oliver, Arnold Zable and Irfan Yusuf.

Scribe congratulates Vivienne Kelly

2008-07-23T14:44:42Z

Vivienne Kelly, author of the forthcoming novel, Cooee, has won the 2008 Australian Woman’s Weekly short story contest for her story, The Third Child.

In October, Scribe will publish Vivienne’s first novel Cooee, described by Cate Kennedy as "a tantalising story of denial, delusion and suspense by a wonderfully fresh and confident new voice."

Norman Doidge, M.D., at Fed Square

2008-07-23T14:08:24Z

Norman Doidge, M.D., author of The Brain That Changes Itself will speak with Natasha Mitchell and Professor Frederick Mendelsohn as part of the Melbourne Conversations series. At the BMW Edge, 5.30 for a 6.00 pm start.

Date: 10 September 2008

Melbourne Conversations. BMW Edge, Federation Square, Cnr Flinders and Swanston Streets, Melbourne

Gideon Haigh launches Ghostlines

2008-07-23T13:53:26Z

Nick Gadd's debut novel, Ghostlines, will be launched by Gideon Haigh at the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville at 4 pm.

Date: 7 September 2008

The Sun Bookshop, 10 Ballarat St., Yarraville Vic.
Ph: (03) 9689 0661

Literary Feast hosts Anya Ulinich

2008-07-23T13:42:46Z

Literary Feast is a book club for guys and girls in their 20-30's who feast on words and books over a cheeky glass or two of wine once a month at Lord Dudley Hotel in Woollahra. September's book will be Petropolis by Anya Ulinich and the author will be at the Lord Dudley to discuss her work with attendees. Start time: 7.00 pm.

Date: 3 September 2008

Lord Dudley Hotel, 236 Jersey Road, Woollahra, NSW 2025
Ph: (02) 9327 5399

David Rackoff with Richard Fidler

2008-07-23T12:33:37Z

New York satirist David rakoff, author of Don't Get Too Comfortable is in conversation with Richard Fidler at Avid Reader Bookshop at 6.00 for 6.30 pm.

Date: 23 August 2008

Avid Reader, 193 Boundary Street West End QLD 4101
Ph: 07 3846 3422

Julian Burnside at the Sandybeach Centre

2008-07-23T12:03:27Z

Julian Burnside, QC, barrister and human rights advocate, penned Watching Brief, a powerful and timely meditation on justice, law, human rights, and ethics, and ultimately on what constitutes a decent human society. Mr Burnside will be speaking at the Sandybeach Centre at 7.30 pm.

Date: 28 August 2008

Sandybeach Centre, 2 Sims Street , Sandringham VIC
Phone: 03 9598 2155

David Rakoff with Charles Firth at Gleebooks

2008-07-23T11:35:05Z

Direct from New York satirist David Rakoff, author of Don't Get Too Comfortable takes us on a grand tour of the American culture of excess. Rakoff will be live at Gleebooks with Charles Firth from The Chaser's War on Everything from 6.30 pm.

Date: 27 August 2008

Gleebooks 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe, NSW.
Ph: (02) 9660 2333

Helen Garner launches Dissection

2008-07-23T11:15:07Z

Helen Garner will launch Jacinta Halloran's debut novel Dissection at the Avenue Bookstore at 6.30 pm for 7.00 pm.

Date: 19 August 2008

The Avenue Bookstore, 127 Dundas Place, Albert Park, Vic
Ph: (03) 9690 2227

Unfinished Business Canberra launch

2008-07-23T11:07:26Z

Kenneth Randall, President of the National Press Club, will be launching Unfinished Business with author David Love at ANU Co-op Bookshop, 5.00 pm for 5.30 pm. Refreshments will be served.

Date: 13 August 2008

ANU Coop Bookshop, Building 17, Union Court, Canberra ACT 0200
Ph: (02) 6249 6244

Cate Kennedy at the Benalla Art Gallery

2008-07-23T09:49:38Z

Cate Kennedy, award-winning author of Dark Roots will be reading from her work at the Benalla Art Gallery at 6.00 pm.

Date: 31 July 2008

Benalla Art Gallery, Bridge Street, Benalla. 03 5762 3027

Barry Heard at Mt Waverley Library

2008-07-23T10:38:39Z

Barry Heard, author of Well Done, Those Men and most recently The View From Connor's Hill, will be giving a presentation at the Mount Waverley Library at 7.00 pm.

Date: 12 August 2008

Monash City Libraries - Mt Waverley branch. 41 Miller Cres., Mt Waverley ph. 9807 5022

Paul Keating launches Unfinished Business

2008-07-23T10:06:44Z

The Hon. Paul Keating will launch Unfinished Business by David Love at the State Library of NSW.

RSVP is essential.

Date: 6 August 2008

Dixson Room State Library of NSW Maquarie St Sydney

David Spratt at Prahran Town Hall

2008-07-23T10:01:48Z

David Spratt, author of Climate Code Red, will be speaking at the Prahran Town Hall along with poet and environmentalist Mark O'Connor from 7.30 to 9.30 pm.

Contact Ashlley Morgan-Shue for further details on (03) 9509 9969.

Date: 6 August 2008

Prahran Town Hall, corner of Greville and Chapel Streets, Prahran, Vic.

Jacinta Halloran at Readings Carlton

2008-07-23T10:53:43Z

Claire Forster, an agent for Curtis Brown, will be in conversation with Jacinta Halloran about Jacinta’s book Dissection. Dissection is the August CAL Readings title. Start time 6.30 pm.

Date: 12 August 2008

Readings Carlton, 309 Lygon St, Carlton, Vic. Ph: 03 9347 6633

Scribe author wins W.K. Hancock prize

2008-07-10T10:11:57Z

Scribe congratulates Robert Kenny for winning the Australian History Association’s W.K. Hancock prize for 2008, for his book, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper and the ruptured world.

In his acceptance speech Robert Kenny said:
The Lamb Enters the Dreaming arose first of all out my prime area of interest as an historian, the social history of ideas, particularly the interconnection of religion and science. It arose specifically out my curiosity about Nathanael Pepper. And in that it revolved around two questions: why did Nathanael convert to Christianity; and why did the evangelical community find his conversion so significant?

He also thanked "the History Program at La Trobe, and at The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, and of course all at Scribe Publications."

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

It’s time for eighteen-year-old James Sveck to begin his freshman year at Brown. Instead, he’s surfing the real-estate listings, searching for a sanctuary—a nice farmhouse in Kansas, perhaps. Although James lives in twenty-first-century Manhattan, he’s more at home in the faraway worlds of Eric Rohmer or Anthony Trollope—or his favourite writer, the obscure and tragic Denton Welch. James’s sense of dislocation is exacerbated by his wilfully self-absorbed parents, a disdainful sister, his cryptic shrink, and an increasingly vague, D-list celebrity grandmother. Compounding matters is James’s growing infatuation with a handsome male colleague at the art gallery his mother owns, where James supposedly works at his summer job but where he actually plots his escape to the prairies.

In the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye, Peter Cameron paints an indelible portrait of a teenage hero holding out for a better grown-up world.

Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

In this meticulously documented call-to-action, David Spratt and Philip Sutton reveal extensive scientific evidence showing the global warming crisis is far worse than official reports and national governments have indicated — and that we’re almost at the point of no return.

Serious climate change impacts are already happening, more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. As the USA’s most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen, told 15,000 of his colleagues at a conference in December 2007, significant climate 'tipping points' have already been passed. These include large ice-sheet disintegration, significant sea level rises of up to five metres this century, and devastating species loss. The Arctic will soon be free of summer sea-ice — a century ahead of projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and the Greenland ice sheet is in imminent danger.

The tipping point for the loss of the Arctic sea-ice was around two decades ago, when temperatures were about 0.3°C lower than at present. Climate Code Red shows that further temperature increases of 2 degrees are effectively already in the system. Even a temperature increase cap of 2–2.4°C, which is proposed within the United Nations framework (and is far below what most governments are prepared to aim for), would take the planet’s climate beyond the temperature range of the last million years.

David Spratt and Philip Sutton show that the unofficial projected speed of climate change — with temperature increases greater than 0.3°C per decade, and a consequent rapid shifting of climatic zones — will result in most ecosystems failing to adapt, causing the extinction of many species. The oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life.

The dangers we all face are already much greater than the headlines indicate. According to climate scientists such as James Hansen, it is no longer a case of how much more we can ‘safely’ emit, but whether we can stop emissions and produce a deliberate cooling before the earth’s climate system reaches a runaway trajectory that is beyond any hope of human restoration.

These imperatives are incompatible with ‘politics as usual’ and ‘business as usual’. Climate Code Red argues there is an urgent need for all of us to recognise that we face a sustainability emergency requiring a clear break from the politics of failure-inducing compromise. Even scientifically moderate goals (such as reducing emissions by 25–40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020) now require immoderate rates of technical and social change that are only achievable by shifting formally to an emergency footing.

Spratt and Sutton believe we now need to think the unthinkable, because the case for emergency action is not so much a radical idea as an indispensable course we must embark upon if we are to return to a safe-climate planet.

Walking the Camino (B-format edn): a modern pilgrimage to Santiago

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

In May 2006, armed only with a small rucksack and a staff, Tony Kevin, an overweight, sedentary, 63-year-old former diplomat, set off on an eight-week trek across Spain. But this was not just a very long walk — it was a pilgrimage.

From Granada, in the southeast, to Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest, Tony followed the Via Mozarabe and the Via de la Plata, two of the many pilgrim trails that crisscross Spain and Portugal and that all lead to a single destination. In the Middle Ages, the cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela was Europe’s most famous centre of pilgrimage, and in recent years it has enjoyed a remarkable revival; every day towards noon, hundreds of hot, tired, and dusty pilgrims stream into Santiago Cathedral for the daily Pilgrim’s Mass.

What, in our busy, materialistic 21st century, is this apparently anachronistic phenomenon all about? What drives tens of thousands of people of all nationalities and creeds to make long, exhausting walks across the cold mountains and hot tablelands of Spain, to take part finally in a medieval Christian liturgy of spiritual renewal and reconciliation with God?

Walking the Camino beautifully captures the flavour of what it was like to walk the camino, and is filled with fascinating observations and anecdotes about the nature of contemporary Spain. And because pilgrimage is such a deeply personal experience that has the potential to unlock the deepest recesses of hidden memory and conscience, it is also a profound personal meditation on the nature of modern life.

It will be of interest to people who contemplate making, or who have made this walk; to those interested in the politics and culture of contemporary Spain; and indeed anyone who appreciates fine travel writing.

Bottlemania: how water went on sale and why we bought it

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

Bottlemania is an incisive, intrepid, and habit-changing narrative investigation into the commercialisation of our most basic human need: drinking water.

Having already surpassed milk and beer, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the United States. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we’re hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we’re drinking and why.

In this intelligent, eye-opening work of narrative journalism, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Eric Schlosser did for fast food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? What happens when a bottled-water company stakes a claim on your town’s source? Should we have to pay for water? Is the stuff coming from the tap completely safe? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What’s the environmental footprint of making, transporting, and disposing of all those plastic bottles?

A riveting chronicle of one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth century as well as a powerful environmental wake-up call, Bottlemania is essential reading for anyone who shells out money to quench their daily thirst.