About
SIB is mostly about youth literature, but is also about coming to terms with our own ignorance – of the publishing industry, in particular, and the world at large, in general.
The blog started as a way to investigate blogging technology, and as a place for Ryan to empty his thoughts, about literary culture, philosophy and interesting things that happen, so there’ll be a bit of that.
Ryan is a writer, editor and book junkie with experience of both extremes of the book industry’s demographic, currently as a book editor at Wakefield Press, and previously as editor of Voiceworks, a Melbourne-based quarterly produced entirely by writers and editors under 25. He also does pro bono marketing for Wet Ink, the magazine of new writing.
Felice is new to the blog. She knows Ryan from Voiceworks. Currently a digital publishing assistant at a major educational publishing house in London, she finished university and fucked off out of Australia never to return. Well, maybe not never. She’s worked with Birlinn and designed the Polygon web page. Later, she spent an evening stalking her idol Jamie Byng, Canongate publisher, and found it highly satisfying. She is interested in all new technology, ebooks, the way things are changing and the doors that are opening and closing behind and in front at with equal measure.
Send us emails and leave comments around the place here – we will probably respond. Ryan likes cows and bicycles and fishing rods and the internet. So does Felice, as it happens.
Youth Literature
Voiceworks is one of a few of a kind in the world, and if you google ‘youth literature’ right now you’ll get a whole lot of stuff about young adult fiction. These are different things, though they can be the same.
Agency
When Ryan is not relaxing he is working on a fantasy about a literary agency that will focus on representing emerging writers to publishers in Australia and the rest of the world. He liaises with and represents a handful of writers in a semi-formal, rather sporadic way. If this interests you, please feel free to contact him. Meanwhile, he’s soliciting book proposals and manuscript submissions at Wakefield, so contact him there about that if you like. There’s more about it here.
Writing
We both write fiction as well – Ryan about misguided people, Felice about cassowaries jumping through windows and scaring the crap out of misguided people. Ryan blogged at Nomadology for a while when he was driving around the east coast of Australia trying to catch fish and stop being so earnest.
