Those of you who know me will be well aware of how pleased I am with The Readings Foundation and the projects it supports. Since we started in 2009, we’ve given away almost $1 million. The money comes from Readings’ profits, some private donations, and the gold coin donations our customers make when we gift-wrap their purchases. The gift-wrap donations alone add up to around $25,000 per annum. The Foundation supports organisations working in the areas of literacy and the arts, with an emphasis on literacy projects. At the moment the focus is on supporting projects in Victoria, but we do support the Indigenous Literacy Foundation which works in remote communities in Northern Australia and SEAM, a literacy project in Papua New Guinea set up by the writer Drusilla Modjeska.

In 2016 we are providing ongoing support for several of our previous partners, including Mallee Family Care who support marginalised families in Mildura through their Reading Discovery program, which focuses on language, literacy, school readiness and resilience building. A grant from The Readings Foundation will again enable Carlton’s Church of All Nations to extend their successful after-school Family Learning Program. The program will expand to include adult literacy, holiday programs, pre-school transitions and tertiary support. Another of our longstanding partners is the Brotherhood of St Laurence. The Foundation is supporting the organisation again in 2016 through their literacy project, the Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY). HIPPY works with children and families, often for whom English is not the primary language, to deliver a hugely successful home-based early learning and parenting program. We’ve also supported the Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowships for the last 4 years and we’ll support them again this year. The Fellowships provide writers with a space to write at the Wheeler Centre and also offers them a small stipend. I’m very excited that two Hot Desk Fellows have books coming out this year: Jennifer Down’s novel, Our Magic Hour, is out next month with Text, and Rajith Savanadasa’s novel, Ruins, will be published by Hachette in July.

A new Foundation grant recipient is the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School (MITS) and our grant will help them build their library. We met recently with the school’s executive director, Edward Tudor, who told us about the objectives of the school, which has its first intake this year. Many families in remote communities would like their children to have wider educational opportunities which are often not easily accessible. Individual city schools and programs have offered scholarships for Indigenous pupils, but with mixed success. Students from remote communities thrown straight into a city school often struggle to adapt to the curriculum and the new lifestyle away from friends and family. The MITS is a residential school in inner-city Richmond; students attend classes at facilities at the Richmond Football Club. The MITS curriculum concentrates on building the students numeracy and literacy skills so they can confidently move to a more traditional school in the second year of the program. While at MITS, the students live in a caring residential environment with kids from similar backgrounds where their culture and their individual needs are respected. The inner-city location was a deliberate choice: ‘We want the students to have a real city experience, to learn to confidently move around a city,’ said Tudor. The people behind the school have years of experience as educators – it’s an inspiring project to be involved with.

Ed. note: Find out more about the projects that The Readings Foundation are supporting in 2016

Brian Johns passed away last month. Brian had a distinguished career in journalism, as the Sydney Morning Herald’s Canberra bureau chief, and in broadcasting, first as director of SBS and then as managing director of the ABC. But I knew Brian in his role as publishing director at Penguin Books, a role Brian held from 1979 until 1987. Brian, although an experienced journalist, had no publishing background when he took on the role and his appointment was a bold move by Penguin’s then managing director, Trevor Glover. Brian came from a working-class Queensland family; highly intelligent, he was an avuncular character who loved ideas and creativity and he was especially passionate about Australian ideas. He came to Penguin at a time when Australian publishing was at its most exciting; Australians were writing their own stories and homegrown presses like McPhee Gribble and Outback Press were leading the charge. Brian jumped right into this and although Penguin was a commercial giant, he was keen to see that these new works were published and, to some extent, didn’t care who published them! He and Glover were instrumental in devising a scheme that enabled McPhee Gribble to expand their list, and out of that house came such classics as Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet. One of Brian’s first big books was an art history title, Rebels and Precursors by Richard Haese. This was about the social movements of Melbourne in the 40s and 50s, and the artists who portrayed the working class and the underprivileged. Often party members or socialists, these artists included Albert Tucker, Yosl Bergner, Danila Vassilieff, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval and Noel Counihan. It was a book about the clash of ideas – perfect for Brian.

Brian’s intellectual and personal generosity was inspirational and the impact he had on modern Australian publishing and writing is immeasurable. My friendship with Brian helped me to form my ideas about what Readings should be and how it should become an advocate for Australian writing. He was the first ‘big’ multinational publisher I’d met. In those days, the big publishers only seemed interested in stopping Readings selling books we’d imported from the US, so it was a surprise and a pleasure when one day, shortly after he’d started with Penguin, Brian walked in and asked, ‘What’s selling?’ It was to become a regular refrain. Brian loved to tell the story of that visit and how he’d gone back to the Penguin offices and told them he’d been to ‘beaut bookshop’ – his colleagues were aghast as Readings was notorious as a ‘troublemaker’.

I’m looking forward to my conversation with Barry Jones on Wednesday 17 February about his new book, The Shock of Recognition, which is about the books and music that have inspired him – the list is pretty long and reflects his passion for the great works of the Western tradition. Please come along, Barry is a remarkable, erudite man.

Ed. note: Find the details for our event with Barry Jones

Mark Rubbo