You can search for courses, events, people, and anything else.
Dr James Jiang, editor of the Sydney Review of Books.
“Stories have a great power in changing the way people understand their lives,” says Associate Professor Kate Fagan, the director of Western Sydney University’s Writing and Society Research Centre.
Boosting this power of stories is something that the Sydney Review of Books (SRB) — Australia’s leading critical journal, located at Western’s Parramatta campus and hosted by the Writing and Society Research Centre — supports through open-access publication of in-depth longform reviews and literary essays.
“There’s a tendency to think of reviews or criticism as an extension of publicity or marketing,” says Dr James Jiang, the journal’s editor. But the SRB conducts criticism as a collaborative and community-based activity. “We aim to create a circuit between readers and writers,” adds Jiang.
The idea of community is something that was baked into the SRB from its inception in 2013, particularly as a part of Western.
“Many of the communities of students, readers and families attached to our university have a wonderful relationship to diasporic communities around the world,” says Fagan. “Western Sydney is speaking to the world, and with the world, all the time. That is tremendously exciting in terms of the opportunity for the SRB to position itself for an international audience, too.”
The SRB pays industry best-practice rates, and since 2019 has published nearly 700 articles and disbursed close to $880,000 in fees for contributors in the process. By doing so, the journal has supported the careers of active critics, whom Jiang notes are often precariously employed.
He adds that SRB contributors have consistently been in the running for the Walkley-Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism, Australia’s sole prize for literary criticism, with former editor Dr Catriona Menzies-Pike winning the prestigious award in 2023.
The SRB is one of a handful of leading arts organisations to secure major four-year funding ($600,000) this year from Creative Australia, which will support their dynamic review programme across 2025–2028 and enable the appointment of a new deputy editor. And in June 2023, the SRB won the bid to host the City of Parramatta’s Laureate Programme, a $50,000 award paid to a highly regarded writer who has made an outstanding contribution to literature and is actively making new work with strong links to the Parramatta region.
The inaugural Laureate is Yumna Kassab, author of the Miles Franklin Literary Award-shortlisted novel The Lovers. “Now, I can work towards projects that are actually important to me — the award has opened up possibilities beyond just being a writer,” she says. “It has changed the way I think about the world, and the way I want to engage with it.”
Kassab says it is crucial having both the SRB and Western Sydney University’s literary imprint, Giramondo Publishing, based in Parramatta, in order to support the stories and literary cultures beyond those currently in the mainstream.
Author, Yumna Kassab
Need to know
- The Sydney Review of Books is Australia’s leading literary criticism journal.
- Headquartered at Western, it is entering its second decade.
- It conducts criticism as a community-based endeavour.
Distinguished Professor Alexis Wright
Distinguished Professor Alexis Wright is an award-winning and internationally celebrated Waanyi author, whose most recent accolades include the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the 2024 ALS Gold Medal, the 2024 Stella Prize and the 2023 Creative Australia Lifetime Achievement Award. She attests to the benefit of having a comprehensive analysis of her work published in the SRB, noting: “I have appreciated the many positive flow-on effects from the very high standard of analysis in these reviews, that have helped to promote my work.”
In addition to championing writers and critics, the SRB team has engaged in advocacy across the literary sector, from writing reports on the state of literary journals in Australia, through to participating in government roundtables and contributing to the creation of the upcoming industry body, Writers Australia, under the Creative Australia umbrella.
Now in its second decade, the SRB plans to continue leading conversations around the revaluation of literature, to advocate further for inclusive digital publishing, and to expand platforms for First Nations writers, editors and critics. “The books in the SRB bring forward the voices of artists who may not necessarily have a public platform in other areas, and show us what we care about as communities,” says Fagan.
Meet the Academic | Associate Professor Kate Fagan
Associate Professor Kate Fagan is Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. She is a widely published writer, academic, editor and musician whose third volume, First Light (Giramondo), was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year Award. She is Chair of the Sydney Review of Books Advisory Board and a former Editor-in-Chief of How2 magazine, the pioneering US online journal of contemporary poetry and scholarship. Kate is Project Director of The Writing Zone, a mentoring program for emerging writers and arts workers from Greater Western Sydney, which she co-founded with the SRB’s former Editor, Dr Catriona Menzies-Pike. She is also an internationally recognised songwriter whose album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive Award for Folk Recording, and she supported Joan Baez on her 2013 tour of Australia/NZ. Kate’s most recent book of poetry, Song in the Grass, was published in August 2024 by Giramondo Publishing.
Meet the Academic | Dr James Jiang
Dr James Jiang is a writer, editor, and recovering academic who lives and works on the lands of the Dharug people. Prior to becoming Editor of the Sydney Review of Books, he was Assistant Editor at Griffith Review and Australian Book Review. He received his PhD in modernist literature from the University of Cambridge and taught in the English and Theatre Studies program at the University of Melbourne for a number of years. His essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of scholarly and generalist publications in Australia and abroad.
Credit
Future-Makers is published for Western Sydney University by Nature Research Custom Media, part of Springer Nature.
Image1: Dr James Jiang, editor of the Sydney Review of Books. Sally Tsoutas
