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Withdrawal to protest against forestry described as unconscionable. The last-minute withdrawal of authors Peter Carey and Joan London from a $40,000 Tasmanian literary prize in protest against the State's forestry practices was unconscionable, organisers said yesterday.
The Tasmanian Pacific Fiction Prize, to be announced on March 30, is part of the 10 Days on the Island cultural festival, which is sponsored by Forestry Tasmania.
Professor Henry Reynolds, who chairs the prize advisory committee, said he was "disappointed and angry" by the withdrawal this week of Booker Prize- winner Carey and West Australian novelist London.
"Writers don't have to enter the prize," Prof. Reynolds said.
"They can boycott it and say they are boycotting it. But to enter and withdraw is another thing altogether. To pull out at this stage is unconscionable."
Carey's True History Of The Kelly Gang and London's Gilgamesh were both shortlisted.
Leading Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan interpreted the double withdrawal as a sign that the State's forestry issue was becoming a "cause celebre".
Flanagan, who won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers' Prize with Gould's Book Of Fish, pulled out of the award last September, and was followed in November by three- times Miles Franklin award-winner Tim Winton, who wrote Dirt Music.
At the time, Winton said he was not comfortable with a prize that was associated with logging interests in old- growth forests.
Prof. Reynolds said he had spoken to the four authors remaining on the shortlist.
"I think some of them indeed are shocked by the action of the two writers that withdrew," he said.
"I think it makes any government literary prize - of which there are many - very vulnerable to this sort of behaviour. This is the first time an attempt has been made to get at a state government by trying to destroy a literary prize."
Flanagan, who spoke to Carey last weekend, said the US-based author had a great fondness for Tasmania.
"He is very aware of both past and present environmental battles," Flanagan said.