The 6th Sleepers Almanac was launched at the Trades Hall Bar in Melbourne last Thursday night by John Bauer. Sleepers Publishing was formed six or seven years ago by Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn to provide an avenue for publishing new Australian writing. Outlets for the short story and poetry, in particular, are few and far between in this country and the Almanac soon made a name for itself in publishing exciting writers. Zoe and Louise then launched out into publishing longer form writing and have published SOLD by Brendan Gullifer, Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming (2009 Age Book of the Year), Kalinda Ashden’s Danger Game, and more recently David Musgrave’s Glissando, all to critical acclaim.
This year, for the first time, Sleepers released the Almanac as an iPhone App (including previous issues). They hope this will bring the writing to a new and wider audience but it remains to be seen if this will happen. They are also thinking of bringing the Almanac out as an e-pub. All the same, I’m sure I speak for all writers, when I say there’s nothing like seeing the ink on paper, smelling it, touching it and thumbing it. You can get your copy of the Almanac at sleeperspublishing or Readings online or read John Bauer’s launch speech at here.
You can also read Emmett Stinson’s review of the Almanac here and Kate Goldsworthy’s for Readings here. A further review in the SMH and The Age is here.