Postmistress Press: creative inspiration for
author-publishers in literary arts publishing
Dear readers,
Since last I wrote much has happened which has
consumed my attention, and taken me away from this blog, whilst I have
started-up an online literary arts publishing house, which is now officially
named Postmistress Press. FuguEditions, which I have already written about on
this blog is an imprint of the press, which is based in the nineteenth century
weatherboard cottage where I live, which happens to have been the first Post
Office in Adamstown, an inner city suburb of Newcastle, Australia.
When first I saw the house years ago, in 1995, I
was drawn to it, even though it looked rundown and dilapidated. There were no
trees in its overgrown garden, and the house was in need of repairs. The real
estate agents tried to dissuade me, with their 'worst house in the best street'
comments. But I was drawn to the tumbledown cottage. I had no idea then of its
past, its history as the post and telegraphy office, in the historic regional area
in which I live. I was to find out about this, over the coming years, when I
was living in the small cottage with my young family. My ex-husband found the
stories in the local heritage column in the Newcastle Herald, and we recognized
photographs of our house.
Now more years later, I have started up a
publishing house, in a house which from the late 19th century, was
for decades the local hub of communications, of postal mail, the forerunner of
online posting, and telegraphy, which is the predecessor to tweeting.
It seems to be serendipitous that I should have
started to design courses and lecture in Arts Media, and Communications, when I
was living in this cottage years ago. I began teaching and designing my
own courses as Adult Education community classes at the Workers Educational
Alliance (WEA). I wrote and ran adult education community courses in Freelance
Journalism (which was my profession in Dublin, Ireland, and in London) and I
designed and named and for two years taught the course: Find Your Voice-
Creative Writing Workshop (which was my passion, creative writing). From that
basis, I was asked if I would lecture in Business Communications courses at the
WEA, and from that experience it was not long before I got a casual lecturing
position, teaching Business Communications and Fine Arts Communications in
several Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges in the Hunter region. I
moved from the Old Post and Telegraphy Office, when I went to Sydney (my two
young children with me) to pursue my career as an Art writer and at the same
time, I took my MA and PhD in creative writing, at the University of Technology
Sydney (UTS).
I founded and ran Arts Features
International, an art writing business, which I started up in 2003, from
my home. After publishing many essays
and long features on prominent international and Australian contemporary
artists, it was circumstance (not choice as such) that was to bring me back to
Newcastle and the Old Post Office, almost four years ago. I told some of the
story of why these events occurred and what happened when I returned, on this
blog, which I began when I found myself alone here, with no company other than
the small black kitten that I found almost starved to death and dehydrated in
the overgrown garden when I was compelled to move back to the cottage. Shadow
is now asleep, on my laptop case as I write, he is a companionable and well
cared for adult cat, four years old.
IMAGE
And I have just started up Postmistress Press, the
first author-publishing house in Australia that will publish e-Books and
printed books, of literary fictions, PhDs and MA theses, and arts writings.
Keeping you posted
Ruth
IMAGE of house
Postmistress Press:
This is the first publishing house in
Australia to publish e-Book and printed books, of literary fiction, MA and PhD
theses, and art writing books.
It is an author-publisher house and
will start-up by publishing books by Ruth Skilbeck, her literary novels.
Australian Fugue series, her PhD, The Writer’s Fugue: Musicalization, Trauma
and Subjectivity in the Literature of Modernity, followed by a book of critical
research based on and developing her PhD research. She will also publish
collections of her essays published in international academic peer-reviewed
books and journals. She will publish a book of her photographic works, and long
essay of critical theory on single lens digital reflex photography and discussing
her projects as a photographic artist. (Some of these works have appeared on
this blog).
The Antipode Room is the first novel
in Ruth's Australian Fugue series, of five novels. It will be published as an
e-Book and as a printed book. The Antipode Room will be for sale this week, as
a Pozible crowd-funding project, taking pre-orders this week. More details to
follow on this blog.
After she has published her own
books, Ruth plans to publish new literary fiction, PhDs and MA theses, and arts
writing, by Australian and international authors. All funds raised through book
sales will go towards this new enterprise supporting new literary arts writing
and publishing that will also bring Australia into the new realm of eBook and
physical book publishing that has already taken off in the US and UK.
IMAGE OF THE COVER
About the Author:
Ruth Skilbeck has worked as an
academic, arts writer and broadcaster, and run an arts writing business Arts
Features International that she founded in Sydney. London-born, she has lived
and worked in Dublin, London, and Sydney. She has recently started up an
author-publisher press, at The Old Post Office, a 19th century weatherboard
cottage in Newcastle, NSW. Ruth has published extensively as an arts writer,
and her research writing also appears in leading scholarly journals and books,
including Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, International Journals
of the Arts, and collections by Routledge and Taylor and Francis, and Demeter
Press. Her research is in the field of Arts journalism reflective practice, art
writing in global contexts of social, economic and technological change, mother
art movements (MAM), and cultural history. She writes and publishes fiction,
poetry, photography and essays. The Antipode Room is her first novel, and the
first in her Australian Fugue series. The novel began life (in a much earlier
stage) in the MA in Writing (creative writing) that she took at the University
of Technology Sydney (UTS), with a sequel that will be published soon by
Postmistress Press. Ruth has a BA honours from Bikbeck, London, and a PhD in
creative writing from UTS, as well as professional qualifications in university
teaching; and small business. She has two young adult children and lives in
Newcastle, Australia.
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