Mark Rubbo
Mark Rubbo is chairman of Readings. He is a past president of the Australian Booksellers Association and was founding chair of the Melbourne Writers Festival. In 2006 he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.
Blog post — 9 Sep 2021
Mark's Say: September, 2021
I always get a thrill when one of my colleagues or a friend has a book published, but at the moment, as Victoria enters its fifth week of lockdown with…
Blog post — 2 Aug 2021
Mark's Say: August, 2021
The protracted lockdowns and the depopulation of city offices has had a terrible impact on bookshops in the City of Melbourne area. As one lockdown ends, these shops have struggled…
Blog post — 28 Jun 2021
Mark's Say: July, 2021
If you’ve been to a literary event in Melbourne, chances are you’ve come across Antoni Jach. Softly spoken, always enquiring, he is often seen intensely listening to the speaker and…
Review — 1 Aug 2021
Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards
When you read Allee Richards’ first novel, it’s tempting to make comparisons with Margaret Drabble’s groundbreaking The Millstone and Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip. In The Millstone, a brief…
Blog post — 29 Apr 2021
Mark's Say: May, 2021
I was doing a bit of tidying up the other week and stumbled upon our Christmas catalogue for 1988. It was a modest production and interestingly a lot of the…
Review — 26 Apr 2021
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
My son-in-law’s cousin was married a few months ago to a Punjabi man she’d never met. The marriage, by her own report, is going well. For some of us in…
Blog post — 30 Mar 2021
Mark's Say: April, 2021
Lygon Street in Carlton and Acland Street in St Kilda were vibrant local shopping strips and wonderful areas to hang out. Sadly, they’ve lost some of their vitality. Both derived…
Blog post — 1 Mar 2021
Mark's Say: March, 2021
For some Australian publishers, growth has come by expanding into other markets. Publisher Hardie Grant has been very successful setting up companies in the US and UK, and so has…
Review — 2 Mar 2021
Return to Uluru by Mark McKenna
By most measures Uluru is just a few hundred kilometres from the geographic centre of Australia. The location of the centre fascinated explorers such as Charles Sturt and Cecil Madigan…
Blog post — 3 Feb 2021
Mark's Say: February, 2021
After having been closed for the best part of a year, the State Library of Victoria (SLV), one of Australia’s most-loved and most-used cultural institutions, is open again. There’s no…