Please join Alan Brough at a celebration at the State Library on Friday 20 March, 4 - 5pm when he announces the the top five books, as voted by Victorian readers in the State Library of Victoria’s Summer Read program 2008-9, and voter’s prizes.

Experimedia
State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street, Melbourne

RSVP by Wednesday 17 March 2009

Telephone                   8664 7555
email                          learning@slv.vic.gov.au
book online                summerreadawards.eventbrite.com

Thanks so much Alice for your insightful posts.

Vote for Growing up Asian in Australia

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Alice will be appearing at:

- Footscray Library on Wednesday 11 February 2009 at 7pm
For more information and bookings phone 9688 0289

- Mill Park Library on Monday 23 February 2009 at 6.30pm
At this event Alice will launch the Mill Park Writers Group. For more information and bookings phone 9437 8189

Alice Pung is our first Summer Read author to blog from 22-25 November.

Alice was born in Footscray and grew up in Braybrook. She is a writer and lawyer, whose work has appeared in The Monthly, Good Weekend, The Australian, Meanjin, The Age, The Best Australian Stories 2007 and Etchings.

Her book Unpolished Gem won the 2007 Australian Newcomer of the Year award. Alice is editor of Growing Up Asian in Australia, one of the books on the Summer Read shortlist.

In this anthology, new and well-known Asian-Australian authors share their courageous and often humorous stories of leaving home and finding their feet. With authors spanning several generations, these stories show what it is really like to grow up both Asian and Australian.

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Alice will be appearing at:

• Footscray Library on Wednesday 11 February 2009 at 7pm
  For more information and bookings phone 9688 0289
• Mill Park Library on Monday 23 February 2009 at 6.30pm
  At this event Alice will launch the Mill Park Writers Group
  For more information and bookings phone 9437 8189

What Alice says about summer reading

 ”I spent most of my adolescent summers in dark corners of the Footscray Library reading MAD magazine. I especially loved folding the back-page cryptic artwork (which could only be done in dark corners, as librarians don’t like their books origamied). At the end of every summer I emerged anaemic, but filled with blissful fits of hilarity.”