With access to the internet, it’s easy to imagine that a world of stories is at our fingertips. In fact, our access to authentic and diverse cultural narratives is blocked by colonial monopolies that have fettered the free movement of world narratives for hundreds of years. Readers trying to wade their way through new story platforms like Wattpad, or purchase books through the US/UK dominated Amazon and Book Depository may not be aware of the economic forces that dam the flow of stories between cultures. Writers who sign a book contract granting world rights to their publishers are often bewildered and demoralised to find their book unavailable except in their local bookstore.  There’s a world of stories that you don’t know exists. This will be an in-depth discussion about territorial rights, the New York/London axis of power, the colonisation of world imagination, and the truth about publishing and post-colonialism. 

>> Kirsty Murray is a prolific author of books for children and young adults. Her work is published internationally and she was a 2017 nominee for the prestigious Swedish prize, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for her contribution to young people’s literature. Kirsty has been a guest presenter at literary festivals across Asia and Australia, an Asialink Literature Resident at the University of Madras and a writer-in-residence at the University of Himachal Pradesh. Her novels include: The Year it All Ended, The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie, India Dark, Vulture's Gate, Market Blues, and the epic quartet of historical fiction, 'Children of the Wind’. She also co-edited the ground-breaking cross-cultural Indian-Australian anthology 'Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean'.

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