Sleepers' Back-up Caught Napping

The Age

Saturday April 29, 2006

JASON STEGER

THE people at Sleepers Publishing, who produce the eponymous Almanac and those wonderful salons, are in a bit of a pickle because some "nasty, snivelling, good for nothing, son of a gun" has broken into their Collingwood office and nicked their mainframe computer. To make matters worse, their back-up system was less than efficiently backed up. They haven't lost editorial material - relax, all you writers - but they have lost their mailing list. According to co-publisher Louise Swinn, "it is comical now two weeks later; at the time it was awful".

So what they need is you to get in touch if you were on that list. Or if you want to be on it. Or if you want to send in a submission for next year's Almanac on the theme of the Family Affair.

Email them at sleepers @sleeperspublishing.com

Be appraised of prize site

If you are planning to enter the Melbourne Prize for literature, of which The Age is one of several sponsors, you'd better get cracking.

Entry forms are available on the prize website from Monday, entries open on May 15 and close on July 14. Remember, this is the richest prize for writing in the country: one writer will get a prize worth $60,000 for a body of work that has made "an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life"; and one writer aged 40 and under will get $30,000 for an outstanding example of "clarity, originality and creativity" in any genre.

Judges are Mark Rubbo, Hilary McPhee and Brian Matthews, with an advisory committee of Louise Swinn, Steve Grimwade, Stephen Armstrong and Rod Morrison. For further information go to melbourneprizetrust.org

People in Grass houses . . .

Gunter Grass usually makes headlines for his writing but earlier this month he was in the spotlight in Germany for his views on football. Germany, of course, is host of this year's World Cup and Grass lambasted the organising body for ensuring "football is no longer a sport for the people but is merely a big business". He also bemoaned in the Lubecker Nachrichten the tedium of the German domestic competition. Fans of Grass' books will not be surprised that when the author used to turn out in a veterans league he featured on the left wing. -- JASON STEGER

© 2006 The Age

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