US Reporting

A new catalog with a group of kangaroos posed gracefully on the cover has recently gone out to American libraries, academics and suppliers interested in Australian books. It contains the new Spring offerings of the University of Queensland Press, still the only Australian publisher with its own US offices. Unlike most university presses, UQP publishes fiction and poetry as well as the more typical scholarly monographs. Pearl Bowman who runs the New York-based operation is a rare combination of dynamism and intelligence and sensitivity. At the moment she is campaigning to get other Australian publishers to operate individual or cooperative ventures in the US and hopefully stem the flow of successful authors who depart to greener pastures of foreign publishing houses. (See what Mark Rubbo has to say about this in April ABR.)