Riverton Press will be celebrating a re-launch night on Friday 25 August at the Better Read Than Dead bookshop in King Street, Newtown, Sydney.
Dr. Penny O’Donnell, senior lecturer in international media and journalism at Sydney University, will launch the travel anthology Journeys, Australian Women in Mexico and the poetry book, sprinting on quicksand.
Penny will be accompanied by Journeys contributors, singer Jeanie Lewis and poet Jenny Pollak, along with editors and contributors Ruth Adler and Jacqueline Buswell.
Jacqueline’s second book of poetry, sprinting on quicksand, was launched beautifully by Eileen Haley during the Covid lockdowns to a restricted public, yet deserves a chance before a bigger audience. The book Journeys, on the other hand, has been launched in Mexico, Canberra, Melbourne and on zoom, though never in Sydney, hometown of several of its contributors.
Penny O’Donnell, winner of the Anne Dunn Scholar Award in 2020, taught radio journalism in Nicaragua and completed her MA in Communications at the University Iberoamericana in Mexico City. While she was present during the early planning stages of Journeys, her contribution to a Riverton Press anthology is still in the making. That’s because she’s very busy teaching Media and Communications at Sydney University.
Journeys, Australian Women in Mexico is a collection of prose, poetry and correspondence by 13 Australians about their days or years in Mexico. Their stories range from the early 1970s to the present day. Contributors include academics and poets, a diplomat, a singer, a model, and women who went to Mexico to accompany or meet a partner. One set up a business, another established a children’s refuge and surfing project in the southern state of Chiapas.
Other contributors to the volume will also be present, although our third editor, Jenny Cooper, has lived in Mexico since the late 1960s. And yes, we edited the book thanks to modern communications possibilities!
sprinting on quicksand is Jacqueline Buswell’s second volume of poetry. Her themes include biography, social commentary, a Japanese travelogue and reflections on art.
Jacqueline is a poet with a strong Irish background, a nomadic mind and sharp eyes and ears. This collection is written in a wide range of tones and forms, offered to the reader in precise language and dynamic cinematic narratives. A very sincere desire for a world of love and justice runs through her poems.
As we’ll be meeting in Newtown, the graphics today are from Sydney’s inner west.
We hope you can join us at the Better Read Than Dead bookshop, 265 King St Newtown, NSW, on Friday 25 August 2023 at 6.30 pm.