HECATE'S AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S BOOK REVIEW 13.1 2001 Editors: Carole Ferrier, Susan Carson, Shirley Tucker Editorial Assistants: Barb King, Tania Oost Editorial Advisory Board: Brigid Rooney, Margaret Henderson, Barbara Brook Nicole Moore, Bronwen Levy, Maryanne Dever Donna Lee Brien Cover: Kay Singleton Keller Journey of the Goddess Oil on canvas 101 x 101cm EDITORIAL This is the second issue of AWBR since it became an internet magazine. We are resuming twice yearly publication in May and November (simultaneously with the two issues of Hecate per year), and plan to develop and expand Australia's only (on or off the net) women's review of books. The expansion will include both a more extensive coverage of recent publications and a widening of our range of reviewers. We will continue to publish reviews by Australian women of Australian and, occasionally, other texts. More frequent publication will enable us to engage more centrally with current debates in relation to women and feminism. While the Review runs some material that relates to women's studies and gender studies, the Australian Women's Studies Newsletter that will shortly begin to be published on the Australian women's studies resources site to which the Review is currently attached will generally take articles, reviews and reports that relate specifically to that field. But there are overlaps, and women and feminism have often historically had a flair and a predilection for crossing boundaries whether between genres, disciplines or any binary divides. The Australian Women's Book Review doesn't purport to be a general magazine, any more than does Hecate. It is a magazine for readers who are interested in women's writing and feminist or other radical perspectives that ask questions and raise problems. Australian reviewing has never had a very distinguished history, and the reviews pages of the newspapers are getting duller and thinner. While the Australian's Review of Books ran an constricted and limited body of often predictable reviewers, writing at great length for great financial rewards, its passing announced by Luke Slattery on 31 June is a pity, for it had potential to be something very good. This must have been what the Literature Board thought when they allocated to it such generous financial support, and it is absurd that its newspaper host could not justify its continuation. There are some good reviews sections in the journals, notably in Overland and several of the other small magazines and, for more substantial books by women, Australian Feminist Studies. Many of the other women's magazines have gone. The American Women's Review of Books, published eleven times a year from Wellesley College is in its 18th volume and seems to be financially secure, and there are substantial reviews sections in journals like Signs, Feminist Studies and Canadian Woman Studies. But most of these journals do not combine 'creative' writing or the discussion of it with works of cultural commentary. To some extent this is a distinctively Australian mix. As Ian Syson points out in the latest issue of Overland (163) women magazine editors are becoming an endangered species in recent times. Men have replaced the late Helen Daniel on the Australian Book Review, and Stephanie Holt on Meanjin. While we are of course not so crude as to see men editors as no good for women, and would not bother to draw anyone's attention to how infrequently any of them have mentioned Hecate in the past twenty-seven years of its existence, the advent of more equal numbers of women in literary arenas in recent years was (other things being equal) a welcome development. And there is some hard (as they say) research data being generated by Austlit: the Australian Literature Gateway, that allows us to say, for example, that in Meanjin, Southerly, Westerly, Overland and Quadrant, from the 1940s to the 1990s (as Marie-Louise Ayres' recent study showed), the male to female writer proportions were 60/40% and the proportion of works by male writers to female writers was 71/29%. Whatever we make of this, it is not likely to be what Gerard Windsor suggested in Island 27 in 1986, that 'women writers get favoured status treatment … the worst position for a writer to be in is that of being a middle-aged, Anglo-Celtic male.' (The Austlit records show that, apart from a brief fling in the 1960s, Quadrant does not seem to have published indigenous authors for the next 30 years which would seem to present some problems for Windsor's theory of white disadvantage.) In terms of his theory of male disadvantage, it is clear that women haven't featured and still don't, at all equally on the literary landscape. Sometimes, women's magazines such as Hecate or the Review are asked why they continue, or how they perceive the need for their continuation, when 'so many other people/places/publishing venues' are 'doing the same thing.' (The same question often gets asked of women's/gender studies teachers in universities, and they usually reply that they do it better - other people don't do it with a great deal of depth, political grasp or, perhaps, humour.) We would be interested in your views on whether we need a Women's Review of Books, what it can do well, or differently, what it might do more of. We have plans for expansion and development and would like you to write for us, if your writing would find a more suitable home here than in other places. (CF) Review articles are anonymously refereed. Contributors are paid $60 for a review, $90 for a review article. There are two issues per year of the Review and of Hecate in May and November. The Review is now an internet publication only. Subscriptions to Hecate are individual: A$35 p.a., Institution: A$154 p.a. Editorial and subscription address: PO Box 6099, St Lucia, Q4067. Fax: 07 3365 2799.