The future of the short story.

COLLECTIONS of short stories are currently difficult to market. Is this because they are no longer as popular with readers as they used to be, or because publishers find it more profitable to push novels and various forms of non-fiction? The fact that some publishers package stories as "novels" suggests this is so.

But there are signs of revival in the story's fortunes. Recently Peter Goldsworthy published a collection and one from Tim Winton is due soon. That aficionado of the short story, Frank Moorhouse, is the new editor for Black Inc of the yearly collection of "Best Stories", whose distant ancestor is Coast to Coast. As I know from being a co-judge of the annual Steele Rudd Award of the Queensland government, the most important and richest prize for the genre, it is small publishers who have been keeping it alive in recent years. I might mention, too, that the number of entries for the 2004 award has increased after falling several years ago.

But news of a recent "international colloquium" in Italy on the genre's incarnation in Oceania may come as a surprise. "A wake or a sign of revival?" a reader might ask. As it turned out, not surprisingly, hopes alternated with doubts. The unexpected venue was the University of Verona, in that elegant northern Italian city, since Roman times a crossroads within the country and between it and northern Europe.

Why Verona as a site for a short story colloquium? Its university lies off the beaten track of annual Australian studies conferences drawing academics to Europe to strut their half-hour (as I have done). Verona has never been on the circuit, yet its scholars have taken an interest in post-colonial writing: Pietro Spinucchi wrote the first book on Patrick White; Angelo Righetti, chief organiser of this conference, is the author of a recent book on Vance Palmer as well as being a Browning scholar; and the interests of Maria-Teresa Bindella, currently head of department, include Pacific literatures. There are some sixty students currently attending courses on the story in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, and overall about 150 students attended the colloquium. How many Australian universities can now attract such numbers on such literary topics? For the occasion the university library mounted a display of its impressive holdings in the area.

The term "colloquium", an informal conference or group discussion, signalled a departure from the usual type of conference of crowded and multiple sessions. Subtitled "Theory and Practice", it used a distinctive format to foreground writers and writing and to bring together cultures usually considered separately. It was built around a nucleus of invited writers speaking "in conversation". This was accompanied by discussions of their work and of other writers, by Verona staff and postgraduates.

The invited writers--funded entirely by Verona--were: Kate Grenville, Frank Moorhouse, Bruce Bennett (author of a recent history of the Australian story from UQP) and myself from Australia; Patricia Grace, a Maori writer, Bill Manhire (currently Katherine Mansfield Scholar at Menton) and Lydia Wevers, anthologist and critic, all from New Zealand; Sia Figiel from Samoa--an impressive gathering representing a range of writing careers.

Moorhouse has devoted himself over a long period to the story, though latterly a novelist and from the beginning also a journalist-writer of many parts; ...