Jodi McAlister & Emmett Stinson – Talking Publishing

Staff members Jodi McAlister and Emmett Stinson spoke at the Small Press Network (SPN) Independent Publishing Conference “Industry Research Day”, held recently at the Wheeler Centre.

Jodi’s paper was entitled “Not Quite YA, Not Yet Adult: The short but complex history of ‘New Adult’ fiction”. It focused on how and why the “new adult” genre tag has emerged, and how the category has been shaped by industrial, social, and textual factors.

Emmett presented on “Self-Publishing Highbrow Literature”. Through analysis of the production and reception of Sergio De La Pava’s A Naked Singularity (2009) and other self-published literary novels, he argued that self-publishing actually reproduces the division between commercial (or heteronomous) and literary (or autonomous) works from the earlier literary field, rather than overturning it, as some scholars have claimed.

During the Trade Day, Emmett also chaired the final panel on the topic of “Publishing in the Age of Trump” with Keynote Speaker Danika Isdahl of Sarabande Books and Per Henningsgard (Curtin University).

On 27 November, Jodi was also part of the Digital Publishing Symposium at the University of Melbourne, speaking on a panel about creative writing and digital publishing.