It is now for the first time entering worldwide distribution in hardback and will soon be available in libraries and good bookshops. It includes a long first chapter on exiled writers which expands on and updates my article on exiled writers published originally in a special edition of the peer reviewed A-listed journal Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (Volume 7, Number 3, September 2010) that was then published in the same collection Cultural Studies of Rights: Critical Articulations, by Routledge, as a hardcover book, then paperback and ebook, edited by John Ngyuet Erni. For my essay I interviewed two exiled writers, Cheikh Kone, a journalist and writer from the Ivory Coast, and Mohsen Soltany Zand, a writer, poet and musician from Iran, who had been held in Australian immigration detention centres for several years before being granted permanent residency. Cheikh Kone now holds a high post in the public service. Mohsen Soltany Zand has released albums of his poetry and music. In preparing The Writer's Fugue for publication for global distribution, which is based on my PhD (2006) I included this essay as a first chapter and updated it, with new studies, of two writers, and the Sydney Biennale Boycott by international and Australian Biennale artists and art writer in 2014- in protest against the then major sponsorship of the Sydney Biennale, and the chairman of its board profiting from his company, Transfield's lucrative contract to run the 'offshore processing centres' for asylum seekers that had been shown to be in breach of basic human rights standards.
As part of this updating I have included posts by Behrouz Boochani, exiled writer and journalist who is currently marooned on Manus Island, after waiting for years in the Australian-run Manus Island "processing" centre for asylum seekers. Behrouz has a Masters in Geopolitics from Ilam University and was a founder of the Kurdish language and culture magazine Werya.
Today I posted a copy of The Writer's Fugue to Behrouz on Manus Island.
I posted it from my local post office in Adamstown, and sent it by tracked mail.
I shall be following the flight of this book to Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island, on tracked mail, and reporting on its progress.
Also included in the new long updated first chapter is an brief review and interview with Christopher Barnett, the well-known Australian poet and dramaturge who in the late 1980s disappeared into what is an effective self exile in France, due to the political climate in Australia at the time.
For more details on The Writer's Fugue, and where to get it visit the publisher website, by clicking here: http://postmistresspress.com.
Text and photographs copyright
© Ruth Skilbeck 2017
(PHOTOGRAPHS REMOVED-RS JULY 2018).
(PHOTOGRAPHS REMOVED-RS JULY 2018).
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