Anthony Eaton's Blog: Musings from an Outer-Spiral-Arm - Posts Tagged "reading-matters"

Okay, so there are people all over the country currently blogging their experiences at the fantastic Reading Matters conference, which took place in Melbourne last weekend: James Roy for one, and my new friend Adele, for another.

I'm not going to repeat everything they've said (or, in Adele's case, are in the process of saying) here. Suffice to say that, as ever, the Reading Matters crew did an awesome job of putting together one of Australia's best conferences for those involved in the children's and Young Adult writing industry.

This is the third time I've attended RM, and each time I come away challenged, awed, and very fired up to get into some new projects. This year, with my Darklands books finally behind me, and Into White Silence now out on the shelves, I'm actually in a position to do something about this, and you can bet I'm going to. (Right after I mark and grade the 100+ essays which arrived in my mailbox while I was attending the conference.)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not going to list my favourite parts here (see Jim Roy's Blog, if you're interested, because my list would be pretty much the same as his...) But if I had to pick a single highlight from the conference, I suspect it would be John Green's opening address (Tim Flannery's presentation coming in a very close second). John, an American, pointed out to us the utter stupidity of allowing our publishing industry, and the distinctly Australian 'voice' of our young adult and children's fiction (which was, let's face it, on glorious and prominent display at RM) to be gutted by changes to the parallel import laws for books in this country.

Much has been blogged on this topic in recent weeks, too (Including a brilliant blog post done by Lili Wilkinson, who was also one of the team responsible for Reading Matters), so I don't intend to re-invent the wheel here. Suffice to say, though, how terribly sad it is that even one of the USA's top Young Adult writers can see the inherent dangers involved in this policy change, and yet here in this country, there is still a strong movement to allow the proposed changes to occur.

Of course, just like John at RM, I'm really preaching to the choir, here. Still, good to get it off my chest.

Thanks to Paula, Mike, Lilli and the rest of the Reading Matters crew for a lovely, stimulating weekend. Toby enjoyed it a great deal, too!