Dear Vice-Chancellor, I am sure you had the best interests of UWA at heart when you made your recent decision to substantially close down UWA Publishing, but as one of its authors, I strongly urge you to reconsider immediately. UWAP, under the superb leadership of Terri-ann White, is a leading voice in Australia's literary community. It has developed and facilitated the work of countless creative writers, and innovative researchers and thinkers, including Australian poets like myself, whose work has been widely read and critically acclaimed. As Ms White points out in a recent radio interview, the profile of UWA is not particularly high in the rest of the country, or the rest of the world, but through this publishing house it has come to be seen as a centre of enlightened best practice, a beacon of how culture should be practiced and disseminated. Shutting it down would not only limit the potential of this ongoing expansion of interest in what the university has to offer through this highly esteemed publishing house (and, undoubtedly, numerous other programmes). It will most likely create a cultural backlash which will send perceptions of UWA (and unfortunately, very possibly, by association WA culture generally) back to the way Queensland was seen at the time of Bjelke-Petersen. Please reverse your decision immediately. In fact, I would encourage you to expand your support and funding for UWAP as one of the most successful public faces of your educational enterprise. With all best wishes, Richard James Allen I **** Support UWAP by signing the petition at Change.org Comments are closed.
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