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Listen back to author talks from the Adelaide Writers Week 2022 featuring Ian Lowe, Jennifer Robinson, Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni.

IN NOVEMBER 1949, the passenger ship the Continental arrived at the docks in Port Melbourne. Among the 200 or so passengers on board, most of them Jews from the displaced persons (DP) camps in Austria and Germany, was my family. My mother, my father, my three older sisters and me. I was born in a DP camp in Linz, Austria, and lived there with my family for almost the first three years of my life.

Given my age when I was carried off the Continental by my oldest sister, who by then was married and pregnant with her first child, I have no memory of the moment I first touched the ground in Australia. Nor do I recall who was there to greet these Jews, most of them refugees and Holocaust survivors.

But my father and my sisters told me when I was old enough to listen, that some lovely Jewish people had been there on the dock to greet us. They did not, as far as I can recall, say that Mina or Leo Fink were among them.

But having now read Margaret Taft’s book, Leo and Mina Fink: For the Greater Good, having read about the way Leo and Mina had been there for virtually every ship arrival carrying Jewish refugees—how they had worked so tirelessly to get the Australian government to accept these Holocaust survivors, how they had been key players in establishing the refugee and welfare organisations that helped bring thousands of these broken traumatised people to Australia, I was pretty sure that either Leo or Mina Fink, or both of them, were there on the dock to greet us.

Read the full launch speech at plus61j.net.au

Monash University Publishing is proud to welcome Julia Carlomagno, who commences in the new role of Publisher.

Julia joins Monash from a career in trade publishing, including roles at publishing houses Black Inc., Scribe and Penguin, and has won both Australia’s national editing awards (the Rosie Award for Editorial Excellence and the Barbara Ramsden Award). She has worked with award-winning researchers and writers such as Joëlle Gergis, John Keane, Jeff Sparrow, Alice Pung, Anna Krien and Margaret Simons, and was the deputy editor of the journal Australian Foreign Affairs. Julia’s appointment marks the continued reinvigoration of Monash’s list as it seeks to bring the best ideas and scholarship to a broad audience.

Monash Publishing Director Greg Bain says: “Monash Publishing is certainly gaining traction through the In the National Interest series, and having Julia build our nonfiction presence for a wider readership is a welcomed boost.”

Publisher Julia Carlomagno says: “It’s delightful – and dizzying – to be back on the Clayton campus after studying here many years ago. Monash, across campuses and countries, is home to many of the world’s best minds, producing ideas that change the future and shape the way we think. Our vibrant publishing team has the skills and rigour to work with authors to turn ideas into brilliant, agenda-setting books.”

Monash University Publishing is seeking book pitches and proposals from the Monash community and beyond, with a particular interest in the areas of sustainability and the environment, science, Indigenous affairs, politics, sociology, popular culture, economics, history and biography.

See our submission guidelines for further details.