Star making: A publishing history of Thea Astley

This article focuses directly on Thea Astley s publishing history from the time of her involvement with Brisbane s avant garde in the 1950s, her early inclusion in regional collections, and her emergence as a Miles Franklin prize-winning author, through the enabling pen and advocacy of one of Angus Robertson (A R) s finest fiction editors, Beatrice Davis, to the establishment in the 1980s of Astley s ultimate author-publisher relationship with Penguin Books and her own overseas literary agent. It will also examine the publishing trajectory of selected novels released and re-issued by the University of Queensland Press (UQP) and Penguin Books, and revisit the divides between writer and editor, publisher and publicist, and the dis/enabling inspiration of difference in the tropics, in the context of the gendered histories of publishing at A R, Penguin Books and UQP.