Spinning Webs Editorial

Spinning Webs is an anthology of writings from Spinifex Press authors living and working in the Asia Pacific region. It is a small sample of some of the work available from Australia’s own award-winning feminist press. Spinifex is sixteen years old and in April 2007 launched its eBookstore and a completely revamped website.

When we began this project of putting up a sampler of writings from Spinifex anthologies and books we were faced with some challenges:

• Ensuring we had permission from the authors.
• Aiming for a wide representation of authors across Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Pacific and different countries in Asia such as India, Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, and we had hoped for China.
• Having electronic copies available to us.
• Having current email addresses to contact authors in the event of not having had prior permission to reproduce their work electronically.

We started with a list of about fifty writers but with all of the above taken into account we ended up with around twenty writers. The work comes from anthologies and there are also some extracts from books.

In the last sixteen years, we have published anthologies across a range of areas including three anthologies of writings about the meaning of animals in women’s lives, collections of mixed genre writing (e.g. drama, poetry, fiction, autobiography), lesbian writing, travel writing, writing about politics – and more. The books we’ve published have crossed a similar range of areas. Spinifex authors come from every continent, and for a small press we have significant lists of books from the Asia Pacific region as well as from Africa. We have always looked for fresh writing, for writing that challenges dominant cultures and for international and local voices.

The impetus for this anthology is to showcase some of the writing that will become available over the next year or so in electronic formats. In mid-2006 we embarked on a project to turn as many of our titles as possible into electronic books. First of we sought out permission from our authors and received an incredibly positive response to a royalty-based arrangement which we hope will open up new audiences for Spinifex authors. We also believe that it will increase the sale of books, as the reach of the Internet is far wider than any distribution system we could ever put in place.

The new Spinifex website and the eBookstore went live in April. If you bookmark our site http://www.spinifexpress.com.au and revisit from time to time you’ll see new books become available. We plan to have around 60 titles available by the end of 2007.

We hope you enjoy this sampler of writings. It includes Indigenous writers from Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, writers whose lives straddle borders and sea crossings, writers from the Philippines, India, Indonesia and Japan, as well as those who’ve migrated from other parts of the world to this region. It includes poetry and short fiction, autobiography and scifi, archaeology and extracts from novels. And, if you visit the eBookstore you will find some of these works in electronic formats. Spinifex titles have been translated into many languages including Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, while others are available in English in India, Bangladesh and the Philippines. The writers of some of the pieces included in this electronic anthology have been published in these languages and territories.

For further information check out our website or contact us, we’d love to hear from you, and help us keep independent feminist presses alive.

Susan Hawthorne, Publisher and Belinda Morris, Editor.
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