Mark's Say, June 2018
Last month the Wheeler Centre announced a visionary and exciting new initiative supported by the Aesop Foundation. The Next Chapter is a unique three-year program to provide not only monetary support for emerging writers but also professional support for getting their works published and marketed. Successful applicants will receive $15,000 to develop their work; they’ll be paired with a mentor who will help them navigate the process from concept to book.
Another wonderful new opportunity for local writers is the Readings Residency Award, part of this year’s Melbourne Prize for Literature. The award offers an early career author support through $5,000 cash, a $2,500 Qantas voucher and a space to write in the Norma Redpath Studio in Carlton.
You can visit the Wheeler Centre website and the Melbourne Prize website for more information about these fantastic opportunities.
The Wheeler Centre is housed in a wing of the State Library Victoria which announced that in the fiscal year 2016–2017 it had 2,071,250 visitors. That makes it the fourth most popular library in the world after the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library ( but that covers 59 branches), and the National Library of China in Beijing. The Library is undergoing a major redevelopment – which will also see Readings State Library branch relocated to a bigger and better space and no doubt even greater growth in visitors. A recent visitor to the Library was celebrated Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The Library’s director of library services and experiences, Justine Hyde, said, ‘He loved the library and was overwhelmed with our collection of his work.’
One of my Sunday morning rituals is coffee with my wife at her current favourite neighbourhood coffee shop, but lately she’s been dragging me over to Supernova, the new coffee shop at the rear of our Hawthorn shop. ‘The coffee is sublime,’ she asserts, and I must admit I’ve been going pretty willingly for not only is the coffee ‘sublime’ but the food is particularly yummy, so much so that I’m planning to work my way through their menu of treats. The proprietor is the delightful Patrick Zhang who, trite as it may sound, is truly passionate about what he is doing.
A few Saturdays ago I was making my way to my last Saturday morning at Readings Carlton before its renovation; I was feeling a bit sad thinking about 1998 when, together with architects Edmond and Corrigan, we renovated Readings’ new home. That design served us very well for 20 years. But I was more saddened when I turned into Faraday Street to see it full of fire trucks and police. The beloved La Mama Theatre, home to theatrical innovation for over 50 years, had burnt down. It was gut wrenching to see the old building just a burnt-out shell, but I was inspired when talking to the artistic director, Liz Jones, ‘The building was lovely, but La Mama isn’t just a building – it’s an idea and that hasn’t burnt down. We will make a new building.’
