There is currently in Australia’s literary sector a discussion about fair employment, fair payment for authors, and promises of greater funding with the announcement of the National Cultural Policy by the Arts Minister, Hon. Tony Burke. As Jinghua Qian and Jennifer Mills wrote preliminary to a discussion on superannuation payments for journal contributors: “Many of us are looking forward to a stronger funding environment and the opportunity to affirm and protect the rights of writers, artists, and other literary journal contributors. Policy-level change is important, but the direct relationships between contributors and the publications that support us are also vital.”
The push for the legal rights of writers to be protected cannot be overlooked and is long overdue. Mills described this as “the fix”. What is also overdue, however, is the need for specific strategy to protect the CaLD sector of Australian writers and editors. We urgently need policy that recognizes the many ways that structural discrimination diminishes, depletes and compromises writers and editors of colour. Of these writers, the CaLD sector are overlooked by research, theory, activism and policy, which work concurrently.
By CaLD, we refer to the acronym for ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ or ‘cultural and linguistic diversity’. One in every four Australians were born overseas. 50% of Australians were born overseas or have an immigrant parent. Linguistic diversity is also significant. One in five people in NSW, where we are based, speak a language other than English (LOTE).
Structural racism is poorly understood because it has not been adequately researched or theorised. It refers to wider political and social disadvantages within society. It normalises historical, cultural and institutional practices that benefit white people and disadvantage people of colour. It also replicates the racial hierarchy established through slavery and colonialism, which values white people as superior.
By structural discrimination we refer to the alarming discrepancy of representation of our cohort in universities, institutions, writers’ festivals, publishing houses, media, paid literary editing positions compared to the demographics of the Australian nation. We also refer to the complete absence of means testing of Government spending that has been allocated to the literary arts. Small CaLD organisations such as Mascara that do not have institutional support are permanently contingent on a grueling grants system, the outcomes of which very often reflect visibility and agency, a garnering of popular support bases to fund projects. It is not hard to see how this becomes exploitative. Within the sector, the absence of means testing to the distribution of Government funding allocated to the literary arts ends up augmenting the described structural barriers.
It is worthwhile to consider the 2019 National Arts Participation study which was a cornerstone evaluation of the impact of the arts and engagement with the arts. This tool and the data identifies behavioural indexes (page 7: the amount Australians engaged with arts activities,) and attitudinal indexes (page 8: how strongly an individual valued and supported the arts and their perception of the impact of the arts: which included arts funding, creativity, and wellbeing.) The results of NAPS demonstrate that CaLD individuals score significantly higher than average (indexes of 142 and 106 where the average is 100). However, following on from this research there has been substantial occlusions and oversights in researching, measuring and evaluating the discrepancies and inequalities in CaLD participation in the literary arts. The ongoing lack of specific data and ensuing body of research on Australian literary journals leaves a gap in our deeper awareness of the dynamics impacting on vulnerable demographic groups in the literary sector. The CaLD community remain neither proportionately nor commensurably represented in the paid workforce, by which we mean in universities, the state Writers’ Centres, publishing houses, mainstream media. This discrepancy is a fundamental problem and makes them vulnerable to exploitative dynamics, that ends up limiting their repertoire of literary tropes. Our community is very vulnerable to white power.
Yet what does the state of publishing look like? We know it is predominantly, indeed almost exclusively white, with the exception of a handful of CaLD literary editors and journalists. Leah Jing McIntosh at Liminal, Cher Tan works at Overland, and SRB’s appointment of James Jiang signal new directions. Better and Fairer representation on Arts Boards, as promised by REVIVE, should include CaLD members who are from ALL economic stratas of Australian society. The intersectionality of race and class is glaringly absent from the well-established positions reflecting the cultural tenets of the White Australia Policy, which although it was progressively legally dismantled between 1943 and 1973, unfortunately continues to inform how we see ourselves as a nation. The unspoken/unspeakable racist taboos persist and remain about the colour of skin, which in no way reflects our culture or the authenticity of our voices. Moreover, as Katherine Day writes recently in The Conversation, the corporate powerhouse of publishing spins in a climate of risk, that is notoriously unpredictable and unforgiving.
Race and skin colour are both protected attributes under the Fair Work Act. Under the Fair Work Act what constitutes an adverse action includes offering a potential employee different and unfair terms and conditions for the job compared to other employees. Perhaps, we need as an artistic community to reconsider the racialised framing of fair and equitable work.
Same, same? Why we need specific strategy and research?
In October 2022 we were approached by Catriona Menzies-Pike, then editor of Sydney Review of Books to join SRB’s project on literary journals in an advisory capacity. Specifically, the brief was to provide consultation on their survey of literary journals. The survey’s emphasis was on digital practice, audience engagement and who gets paid for what. It was put to Mascara that the research would provide a detailed account of the current state of literary journals operating as arts organisations – and point to areas of greatest need in terms of funding and other forms of support. The premise of shared interest was that our literary ecology would be less diverse and less interesting without a thriving cohort of journals. Mascara was also informed that SRB’s research would help Creative Australia identify areas for funding priority – and it would help those of us who work on literary journals to advocate for our needs. We are pleased to report that as a result of Mascara’s research and consultation, that SRB did take up our primary recommendation.
Primary Recommendation to SRB
Mascara is a foundational journal that has played an important role in advocacy, research, as well as publishing and platforming justice for CaLD writers. Looking back over past grant applications, we noted that we had proposed a diversity survey for literary journals in 2016 to the Australia Council, which was not successful in achieving funding. We were intending to obtain demographic data particularly as concerns the opportunities and participation of the CaLD cohort, their paid and voluntary workloads and correlate this with population demographics.
We identified to SRB that the absence of economic planning and strategy for our cohort warranted targeted questions in SRB’s proposed Survey of Literary Journals. We provided a specific recommendation to SRB that there is a need for quantitative data under the section on Creative Labour. We noted that questions 57-59 of their draft survey needed to include questions designed to provide information on who is being paid in the sector.
General recommendations on digital practice were also provided by Mascara. We noted that some of the sub-questions and Creative Practice questions (1-4) that we recommended were not included in SRB’s final survey. This leaves an important gap where further research is required.
Cultural outcomes of literary journals can also be measured in terms of books published, which have been associated with a literary journal. Mascara has over the last 16 years in partnership with publishers co-edited CaLD collections including Contemporary Asian Australian Poets(Puncher and Wattmann), deciBels3 a series of ten poetry chapbooks by CaLD poets (Vagabond Press), Resilience (Ultimo Press) and Crip Stories with NewSouth.
Mascara noted that if SRB were to run the questions which we recommended, it would become alarmingly apparent that there is a major discrepancy between CaLD participation at a paid level (far below average) despite the higher than average behavioural and attitudinal indexes for our cohort as recorded in NAPS. We note that NAPS is meant to be used to “inform advocacy, audience development and strategic planning initiatives.”
Public Funding for Literature and Cultural Outcomes
The cohorts which most often have strategic planning initiatives include First Nations writers, Remote and Regional writers and individual writers and organisations living with disability. Whilst applauding these important initiatives, we cannot fail to notice the absence of strategic planning for our cohort. Without statistical data and strategy that is focused on economic viability and economic planning for the CaLD sector, the publishing industry remains blind to the privileges enabled because of ethnic difference. Further, the industry is equally neutral to the structural problems CaLD literary journals face.
Like other CaLD publications, we have been navigating the limitations of structural racism in trying to grow and strengthen as a community of writers and critics. Mascara has built on the legacy of CaLD theorists such as Sneja Gunew, but also the creative activist lives of CaLD poets and writers, such as Antigone Kefala, Sudesh Mishra and Dîpti Saravanamuttu. As a community we have needed visionary and symbolic guidance, and continuing lines of leadership. Mascara has been foundational to the pioneering field of creative and critical production and strategic interventions for non-white settlers in Australian literature.
Current funding models do not support the distinctive needs of CaLD journals to strengthen and expand. Why have our ongoing concerns about the endemic nature of unpaid labour by CaLD writers and editors, and the absence of strategy to improve these conditions been ignored by successive governments?
The absence of funding strategy for our cohort makes it harder for them to break through as writers, to build career pathways or foster agency. Creative Australia, and other government agencies for the arts appear to have overlooked the impact of structural racism on the capacity of CaLD writers and editors to participate equitably in the literary arts or to sustain a career in editing, creative writing, literary publishing, literary arts work, or in academia. Under these prevailing conditions it is well described that the CaLD cohort are more vulnerable to tokenising dynamics, to bullying as well as to depletion and burnout. Indeed, the current funding models are archaic and designed for us to fail. The precarity of journals like Mascara entails a systemic failure to sustain the vital networks and the specific knowledges that we have been building, despite the barriers, for over almost two decades.
For such a significant demographic group to not be supported and sustained by funding strategy it follows that forms of meritocracy are thrown to the “industry” heavyweights: right wing media, festivals, the generic mainstream, a handful of institutional gatekeepers; literary agents with commercial interests who forge coalitions with the sector. This is effectively silencing significant CaLD literary talent in Australia.
It is time to do better. Australian readers deserve so much more richness and true diversity of literary editing and storytelling.
Mascara’s Proposed Submission to the REVIVE NATIONAL CULTURAL POLICY:
CaLD writers and allies: We need you to be proactive. Writers Australia is now calling for guidance by the expertise of writers and the literature sector. You have the opportunity to make a difference and provide feedback via the form below.
As a small journal, we’ve endeavoured to break ground by opening the conversation across culture and institutions while there have been enormous barriers to funding in the absence of strategy for our cohort. We are vulnerable as writers and arts workers. It is our lives and our bodies that are being exploited by unpaid work and absence of strategy to recognize structural discrimination and its impacts. We need more than band aids.
National Cultural Policy
The National Cultural Policy closes on 24th May at 11.59 and we strongly encourage you all to sign Diversity Australia’s submission. Mascara applauds and aligns with this submission that recognises the barriers that Culturally and Racially Marginalised (CaRM) and underrepresented Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) communities face. It recommends direct measurable actions and strategies for these communities which demographically make up a significant proportion of the national population. Also recommended is protected funding streams for organisations led by these cohorts, such as this journal.
Here is the link and it is a quick sign, so please support this action to protect us all, especially the CaRM and CaLD communities as the literary sector goes forward.
Given the role of Writers Australia, as determined by Government in the National Cultural Policy (see page 69), what is the top priorities that Writers Australia should focus on?
1. Specific strategic initiatives for the CaRM and CaLD community in policy that recognises the extent to which structural discrimination impacts writers and editors of colour. By structural discrimination we refer to the disproportionately low representation of our cohort in universities, institutions, writers’ festivals, publishing houses, media, paid literary editing positions compared to the demographics of the Australian nation. We also refer to the complete absence of means testing of Government spending that has been allocated to the literary arts, augmenting these barriers.
2. Strengthen First Nations self-determination, cultural authority and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) protections across national cultural policy.
What are the measures of success Mascara Literary Review wants to have in place when Writers Australia is evaluated in 2026?
1. Minimum payment rates for editors of colour must be enabled, preferably by policy as a matter of urgency to support the survival of small organisations such as Mascara Literary Review which has been at the forefront of platforming POC writers, and publishing criticism of First Nations and POC publications. At present the grants streams only encourage us to pay writers and to undertake professional development or mentorships, or residency programs.
2. Four-year Multi-Year investment grants should not require organisations to have a minimum $100k per annum eligibility requirement. This effectively excludes small literary organisations who are not affiliated with institutions, yet who often undertake vital, generative work to create opportunities for many emerging and marginalised writers.
3. Creative Australia and Writing Australia should acknowledge all philanthropy with transparency on its website. The donors should sign disclosures, and they should not be involved in decision-making with respect to the outcomes of grant funding of public funds.
Cited
1. Katherine Day, The Conversation September 5, 2022 https://theconversation.com/the-entire-industry-is-based-on-hunches-is-australian-publishing-an-art-a-science-or-a-gamble-189621
2. National Arts Participation Survey 2019 Australia Council for the Arts