KEITH JACKSON
PUKPUK Publishing received an honourable mention in yesterday’s review of the Crocodile Prize Anthology 2015 by Drusilla Modjeska in The Australian newspaper.
And it would be a fair question for readers to ask, ‘Well, what is this upstart? Where does it fit in?’
Like the Crocodile Prize and PNG Attitude, Pukpuk Publishing is a voluntary, not-for-profit project established to both strengthen the Papua New Guinea-Australia relationship and to ensure authors and poets writing about PNG can achieve publication for their work.
In the case of Pukpuk Publishing, its objective is to bring long-form works to publication and to take those books to market in a coherent way.
The entity is the brainchild of Phil Fitzpatrick and it spun out of his magnificent work to bring the Crocodile Prize Anthology to print, which it has done each year since 2011 - even in the fallow period of 2013.
Phil Fitzpatrick guides authors through the full process of negotiation, commissioning, editing, layout and design and ultimate production.
He now manages a 17-title book list which is constantly growing.
It includes novels, memoirs, short story and poetry collections, children’s books and non-fiction as well as those five anthologies of PNG writing that represent such a great breakthrough in PNG literature.
Books on PNG-related subjects written by Australian authors are part of the ouevre.
You can download the complete Pukpuk Publishing Book List. All the titles are available from Amazon in both hard copy and digital versions.
They include works by authors well-known to PNG Attitude readers - Francis Nii, Leonard Fong Roka, Chips Mackellar, Jimmy Drekore and Diddie Kinamun Jackson (no relation).
Not to mention Phil Fitzpatrick himself, whose most recent novel is hot off the press and well up to his usual rivetting story telling.
The Floating Island is set in World War II in the islands of PNG. It tells the story of Mick O'Shea, a young plantation manager, who witnesses the brutal murder of his employer and family by the invading Japanese.
Mick is determined to join the war effort against the Japanese. He escapes by boat, is wounded and lands on a small island where he is bedazzled by a mysterious family.
Reluctantly leaving, he joins the war effort but, disillusioned by the brutality of conflict, decides to head back to the island.
It has disappeared and he begins his search to locate it and find the peace it offers.
Philip Fitzpatrick: The Floating Island, Pukpuk Publishing, 300 pp, paperback $13.50, Kindle $2.97 (from Amazon)