For many years I’ve worked out of an office–warehouse in Drummond Street, Carlton; for better or worse, we’ve outgrown it. Everything that we sell at Carlton and online comes through that warehouse, and it must all be hand unloaded from trucks, which takes its toll. So, we are moving to new premises in West Melbourne, just next door to Festival Hall. Many years ago, I saw the Beatles and Bob Dylan perform there; now, it’s a Hillsong Church.

Today I’ve been cleaning up and I stumbled on a note from Gab Williams, our Readings Prize Manager and Grants Officer for the Readings Foundation. Gab had written it just after we’d announced the 2022 winners of the Readings Prize. It begins, ‘Thankyou for giving me the two best jobs at Readings – the Prize and the Foundation. I absolutely love them both.’

On Monday 16 January, Gab had a stroke. She passed away the following Saturday. Her passing has left a massive hole in our hearts. Gab didn’t need to tell me that she loved her job; it shone through. In the five years since she became the Readings Foundation grants officer and took over running the Readings Prize, she embraced both roles with a passion and fervour that I think was even greater than mine.

Gab herself was an acclaimed author of young adult fiction and her most recent book, It’s Not You, It’s Me, was published in August 2021, during Melbourne’s second lockdown. She was quite philosophical about that. As a writer, she knew what a struggle it was, especially for new writers, to get attention, recognition and, most importantly, readers.

The aim of the Readings Prize is to support outstanding early career Australian writers to reach readers, and Gab made it her mission to build the influence of the Prize for that purpose. In the week before her stroke, she’d been thrilled to see that we had sold thousands of 2022’s three Readings Prize-winning books. She was also delighted to see that our fiction winner, the magnificent Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, had been picked by contributors to the Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s best books of the year feature as a standout book from 2022 and it had also been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

But Gab was most passionate about her role as grants officer for the Readings Foundation. She wrote in her note to me, ‘I love the fact that the Readings Foundation supports organisations that are doing such important work, especially in the realm of asylum seekers’ support and disadvantaged youths. To work with the Readings Foundation in giving financial aid to the organisations that help these people is an honour and a privilege.’

The Readings Foundation derives most of its income from its share of Readings’ profits, and Gab was devastated that because of Covid the Foundation couldn’t offer any grants in 2021. She was so excited when it came back with a vengeance in 2022. Readings itself was still impacted by Covid, so its contribution was small, but despite this the Foundation was able to make grants totalling $229,898. The funds also included income from investments the Foundation has made, some individual donations (including from Readings staff) and contributions from thousands of individual Readings customers who donated when we gift wrapped their books. Over Christmas alone you made donations of $14,000!

The organisations the Foundation supports work mainly in the areas of childhood literacy and education support. It’s been going since 2009, and over the years we’ve become close to several organisations, while each year we also pick some new ones that have interesting and innovative ideas.

The Smith Family has been a regular recipient. They do amazing work providing financial support to families and children. We’ve supported quite a few homework clubs – some simple, some sophisticated – and we’ve seen some incredible results.

For many years, Carlton’s Church of All Nations has run homework clubs for local children, mainly from the Carlton Housing Commission flats. This program is run by volunteers – university students and retirees from all walks of life work as tutors, encouraging and inspiring young people, many of whom successfully complete their VCE and go on to tertiary studies.

One of the first grants we made in the early days was to 100 Story Building. It’s an organisation based in Footscray and they use writing and storytelling to provide opportunities for the most marginalised children and young people in our community to build the literacy skills, confidence, and sense of belonging that are fundamental to future success. We are pleased to be supporting them again.

Our support for the Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowships began in 2012 and offers emerging writers a three-month residency at the Wheeler Centre and a small stipend. It’s a bit different from the other projects we support as the writers aren’t necessarily disadvantaged, they just need a bit of encouragement. Alumni of the program include Miles Franklin Literary Award winner Jennifer Down.

Over her years with the foundation, Gab grew particularly close to the work of Banksia Gardens and Western Chances. Banksia Gardens is a community organisation based in Broadmeadows. It provides a range of services for residents of Melbourne’s northern suburbs, with a particular focus on education and training.

The program we support is the Aiming High VCE Support Program; it specifically targets young people in the wider Hume area who are in Year 11 or 12 and working towards completing their VCE. The program offers students who care about their studies in-depth support with tutors and time to collaborate with like-minded students.

As a young adult fiction writer passionate about education, Gab loved this program, and in her own time conducted writing workshops with students. Just before her death, the people from Banksia Gardens came in to see Gab and me; they were full of news about their students and the university places they’d been offered. Gab talked about doing more workshops and the discussion moved on to an idea for storytelling workshops.

Most of the students came from refugee backgrounds; many had experienced disrupted childhoods and, for some, this involved terrible events. The students potentially had stories they might want to tell. Gab seized on this; coincidentally she’d been working on a module for a writing program that would help people tell their personal stories. She asked if she could come out and run the program with the Aiming High kids or others at Banksia Gardens who were interested.

It was an exciting and joyous meeting. Gab and I were energised by it, feeling that we were making a tangible contribution.

Western Chances is another organisation that Gab especially liked. Operating in Melbourne’s western suburbs, they provide scholarships to underprivileged students, working with them through their secondary and tertiary years. The scholarships aren’t huge, but they can be life changing, providing the support students need to undertake productive studies.

Gab was immensely proud of the work the Foundation does; she had big plans for it. We will honour her legacy.

The Readings Foundation 2023 grant recipients

• 100 Story Building $15,050 to provide after-school story-making programs for children and young people experiencing disadvantage. Workshops will be held in the Footscray headquarters, reactivating the creative literacy centre which provides an inclusive and safe environment for 6–18-year-olds to connect with their peers through creativity.
• Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation $20,000 for Early Language & Literacy Project to raise language, literacy and numeracy standards in Australia, with a specific focus on Indigenous, disadvantaged and refugee communities.
• Banksia Gardens $20,000 for its Aiming High VCE support program for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Broadmeadows and Craigieburn regions. The program fills a gap that exists in the Hume area for young people wanting to excel in their studies and attend university.
• CAN Community Services $20,000 to provide homework and education support to approximately 70 school students and families from the Carlton Housing Estate and surrounding areas. Working alongside local primary and high schools, and utilising skilled tutors, the program will ensure students have the resources and support to develop literacy and numeracy skills.
• Footpath Library $20,000 to provide people experiencing homelessness access to free quality books and reading glasses through its mobile library services.
• Paint the Town REaD $19,850 for Books for Bedtime, a program that gives early childhood service providers and playgroup coordinators the skills and preloved books to encourage parents to read with their children at bedtime.
• Reading Out of Poverty $15,000 to promote literacy skills in early childhood and provide literacy resources and services to families with young children from low socio-economic backgrounds, including migrants, refugees, and Indigenous individuals in Australia.
• The Smith Family $19,998 for its Let’s Read literacy intervention program to assist disadvantaged children in Dandenong. The program aims to improve language and literacy capabilities of children from birth to age five in socioeconomically disadvantaged and vulnerable communities.
• St Kilda Mums $20,000 for Book Nook book packs to help alleviate the pressures on primary carers and create the opportunity for every child to feel secure, safe and to thrive.
• Western Chances $20,000 to provide new and renewal scholarships to young people experiencing financial and other barriers to education across the western suburbs.
• The Wheeler Centre $25,000 for the Hot Desk Fellowships for emerging writers. In total, 21 writers will be offered fellowships throughout the year, including a Playwright Hot Desk Fellowship, generously supported by the Just Pretending theatre group.
• Young Assets Foundation $15,000 for Fitzroy Homework Club to provide secondary school and young university students with specialist tutors to assist them with a range of subjects and help develop useful study skills.

Learn more about the Readings Foundation and how to donate here.